Council planning 8.5m extension to neighbour's house. Can we get recompense for any loss in property value?

[Trojan Hussar]

We have been aware of the intention to build this extension since we originally moved into our house in 1998. At this time it was merely heresay from the neighbours (the additional bathroom and bedroom is for their disabled son).

In August 2003 we received provisional plans, and it appears that the extension is going to be huge, also to ensure it is in-keeping with the neighbourhood it will have a pitched roof.

As it stands at the moment our back garden loses light in late afternoon/early evening because we are on the east side of a substantial hill. The extension proposed will be 8.5m long (yes eight and a half metres) and the pitched roof will be 4.5m above the level of our garden (our garden is slightly lower than the neighbours as we are downhill from them).

As such we are likely to lose the light much earlier than previously and also our already dingy dining room and kitchen will require artificial lighting on all but the brightest of days.

We were given the opportunity to raise these issues with a surveyor (who has subsequently turned out to be the surveyor also used by the council, so impartiality is in question). And his 'report' which the council have paid =A3500+VAT for essentially is a few pictures of the tatty 'lean-to' on the rear of our house commenting it is in poor repair with no mention of the likely loss of light and almost inevitably value to our property.

We can renovate or remove the lean-to but we cannot knock our neighbours extension down to sell our house.

We have no particular objection to the extension itself, we have been good neighbours and know they have been waiting a long time for the extra space and facilities for their disabled son. However we do feel that there should be some recompense for the potential loss in value to our property. I have written back to the surveyor and asked him to address the issues he was originally asked to look into.

Has anyone experienced a similar situation to this?

I have scanned the proposed plans and uploaded the two images to

and respectively. These are big images (5000x2500 ish) but they are only about 700kb each.

Regards, Trojan.

[ABC]

In August 2003 we received provisional plans, and it appears that the extension is going to be huge, also to ensure it is in-keeping with the neighbourhood it will have a pitched roof.

As it stands at the moment our back garden loses light in late afternoon/early evening because we are on the east side of a substantial hill. The extension proposed will be 8.5m long (yes eight and a half metres) and the pitched roof will be 4.5m above the level of our garden (our garden is slightly lower than the neighbours as we are downhill from them).

As such we are likely to lose the light much earlier than previously and also our already dingy dining room and kitchen will require artificial lighting on all but the brightest of days.

We were given the opportunity to raise these issues with a surveyor (who has subsequently turned out to be the surveyor also used by the council, so impartiality is in question). And his 'report' which the council have paid £500+VAT for essentially is a few pictures of the tatty 'lean-to' on the rear of our house commenting it is in poor repair with no mention of the likely loss of light and almost inevitably value to our property.

We can renovate or remove the lean-to but we cannot knock our neighbours extension down to sell our house.

We have no particular objection to the extension itself, we have been good neighbours and know they have been waiting a long time for the extra space and facilities for their disabled son. However we do feel that there should be some recompense for the potential loss in value to our property. I have written back to the surveyor and asked him to address the issues he was originally asked to look into.

Has anyone experienced a similar situation to this?

I have scanned the proposed plans and uploaded the two images to

and respectively. These are big images (5000x2500 ish) but they are only about 700kb each.

Regards, Trojan.

You do not have any right to natual light in the garden.

[John Rumm]

I very much doubt you will be able to get any compensation in this situation. Even assuming you could, who would you expect to pay it? I would not have thought that entering into litigation with the neighbours was going to do anyone any favours.

It is also questionable that it will have any effect on the property value. I appreciate that it will "feel" devalued to you (initially at least) since you had the pleasure of experiencing it with more light etc. But in absolute terms it is unlikely to actually lower the price any. After all you still bought the place even though you knew that the building was likely.

[Peter Crosland]

If the work has been given planning permission and the correct procedures have been followed then it is unlikly that your property has suffered any actual reduction in open market value. You may not like it and feel that it is worth less but that is not the legal issue. It was your responsibility to make proper enquiries before you purchased rather than rely on hearsay. I very much doubt you have any claim.

Peter Crosland

[Dave]

In article , Trojan Hussar writes

Yes

You have no right to light and loss of value to your house will not be recompensed. Your only course of action is to object citing all the reasons you can, the things you have mentioned will not stop the development individually but you may be able to build up a picture that will sway the committee but even if you get a refusal the applicant can take it to appeal and at the moment Prescotts planning inspectorate is letting just about everything through :-(

Learn to live with it or move.

[Mike]

originally moved into our house in 1998. At this time it was merely heresay from the neighbours (the additional bathroom and bedroom is for their disabled son).

extension is going to be huge, also to ensure it is in-keeping with the neighbourhood it will have a pitched roof.

Why not just put in for a similar sized extension to your own place quoting next door as a precedent ?

[Peter Crosland]

And the statistics to prove this are where exactly?

Peter Crosland

[Jeff]

In August 2003 we received provisional plans, and it appears that the extension is going to be huge, also to ensure it is in-keeping with the neighbourhood it will have a pitched roof.

As it stands at the moment our back garden loses light in late afternoon/early evening because we are on the east side of a substantial hill. The extension proposed will be 8.5m long (yes eight and a half metres) and the pitched roof will be 4.5m above the level of our garden (our garden is slightly lower than the neighbours as we are downhill from them).

As such we are likely to lose the light much earlier than previously and also our already dingy dining room and kitchen will require artificial lighting on all but the brightest of days.

We were given the opportunity to raise these issues with a surveyor (who has subsequently turned out to be the surveyor also used by the council, so impartiality is in question). And his 'report' which the council have paid £500+VAT for essentially is a few pictures of the tatty 'lean-to' on the rear of our house commenting it is in poor repair with no mention of the likely loss of light and almost inevitably value to our property.

We can renovate or remove the lean-to but we cannot knock our neighbours extension down to sell our house.

We have no particular objection to the extension itself, we have been good neighbours and know they have been waiting a long time for the extra space and facilities for their disabled son. However we do feel that there should be some recompense for the potential loss in value to our property. I have written back to the surveyor and asked him to address the issues he was originally asked to look into.

Has anyone experienced a similar situation to this?

I have scanned the proposed plans and uploaded the two images to

and respectively. These are big images (5000x2500 ish) but they are only about 700kb each.

Plans are very rough and ready - I am in a similar situation as your neighbour but for my father who suffers with senile dementia - we have only been allowed to build 3 metres single story and 2 metres 2 story on the boundary and everything else is subject to the 45 degree rule meaning we could only go 5.5 metres back single story and 3.5 metres back 2 story (3 metres from one boundary & 1.2 metres from the other) Our council would not have passed your 'problem' You should study the details of the party wall act

at least it is only single story albeit of very poor design- that skylight thing looks awful

Regards Jeff

[Dave]

In article , Peter Crosland writes

Look at the planning inspectorate website, you have to search through the individual cases to see which ones have been permitted, I have a complaint going through them at the moment which is why I got interested in how many were being passed at appeal level, do you know different? We have had a couple of absolutely scandalous developments passed locally which were opposed by everyone except the planning inspector and the developers

[Trojan Hussar]

Whilst it would appear I have no 'Right to Light' in the garden. This does however raise the issue that my dining room and kitchen which are already poorly lit will experience a loss of light. In view of the size of the extension I strongly believe that the kitchen area will require almost permanent artificial light with the possible exception of the brightest sunny days.

My suspicion however is that when the previous owners but a lean-to on the rear of the house they intentionally obstructed the light to the original windows, and as the new windows have not had "20 years of uninterrupted enjoyment (of light)" they don't qualify.

The existing wall which is not a boundary wall and was built by the previous owners of our property entirely in our property and we had to paint this wall white in order to get sufficient light into the rear of our property. The new wall will be 'in-keeping' with the original house and will be a magnolia render which is unlikely to be as effective as our original white wall.

Where does the 45 degree rule come into play here, as this extension would clearly be within that 'zone' even from the kitchen window furthest from the party wall.

Regards, Trojan Hussar

[Dave]

In article , Trojan Hussar writes

You have no right to light, it is as simple as that, AIUI there are a

*few* buildings in London that have a law protecting their light but that is all.

[Peter Crosland]

Obviously I don't know about the individual case you refer to. However, to substantiate your statement one has to look at it on a vaild statistical basis i.e what percentage of appeals were successful in one period compared with another. The last time I looked at this locally it did not alter much from year to year. What many people don't comprehend is that inspectors have to make a judgement based on planning law rather than bowing to local opinion. It is not unusual for a council's paid planning staff to recomend approval and have this ignored by the council members.

Peter Crosland

[Doctor Evil]

They have quotas of new housing to provide, so will steamroll all sorts through to meet targets. If they knew their job well, they would steer the developer to a certain type of house and development. A development that is acceptable to most on conception. Unfortunately they don't do this. They tend to allow the developers to submit ridiculous schemes and that take time and effort to squash, then it all starts all over again. All avoidable if they were professional enough and though about existing residents, who are a nuisance as far as they are concerned.

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[Dave]

In article , Peter Crosland writes

Our local cases prompted me into looking at the planning inspectorate to see if things had changed, at the same time I found out that the inspectorate is now way behind in dealing with cases, now put this together with the Deputy Prime Minister wanting to increase the numbers of houses being built by raising the density of development and you come up with a scenario where the pressure may be on for the inspectors to let more appeals through. This is the conclusion I came to anyway so I started looking at the recent appeals to see how many are approved/refused which is why I made the statement The planning Portal is a useful site with lots of appeal cases on it. BTW the local cases were refused by the planning department *and* the committee before being successful at appeal. The inspectors reports supporting their decision have been shown to be nonsense and in one case where the buildings are now complete, the reasons for the original refusals have been shown to wholly correct.

[Peter Crosland]

Noted. I would certainly not think the planning system is perfect but it does seem better than some others I have seen. What does make a mockery of it is when the inspectors decision is then overidden by the Minister for purely political reasons. Hopefully a complete overhaul will happen after the election.

[Tony Bryer]

"... If the shadow minister?s speech represents the Conservative Party?s ?new vision?, then housebuilders can only hope Blair or Brown occupies No.10 Downing Street after the next election.

But should the Conservatives manage to oust Labour, we will have to rely on civil servants at the Treasury and the new housing and planning ministry telling the new Tory ministers their policies are hopelessly incomplete, contradictory and would have disastrous consequences for the economy, the housing market and the British people?s aspirations to home ownership"

The harsh reality is that if you left planning policies to local councils then the NIMBY brigade would dominate. What happens here time and again is that a massive protest is mounted against something which is allowed on appeal and afterwards you wonder what the fuss was about - life as we know it has not ended and the car park of the Sainsburys/Tesco/Wickes etc that 'no one' wanted is strangely full.

[Doctor Evil]

You have a right to light, Ancient Lights, but no direct sunlight. In other more civilised countries you have a right to direct sunlight. So, if you built solar panels on the side of your house and they provided all your heating for over 10 years, someone has the right to block the sun and stop it operating.

People would buy land adjacent to their homes to ensure adequate sunlight, which turned into ransom strips, which Canada outlaws.

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[Dave]

In article , Tony Bryer writes

But aren't local people/councils the best to judge what is right or wrong for an area as long as the reasons cited are sound planning reasons and not NIMBYism, in one particular case we were outwitted by a sharp planning consultant who acted on behalf of the developer and swung the case as far as the inspector was concerned, the decision was effectively 'bought'.

[Tony Bryer]

The second tends to be dressed up as the first. And 'local people' tend to be a vociferous minority who are far from representative when they claim that 'no one wants ....'. Personally I (unlike most Conservatives when considering this subject) tend to free market views: the fact that a developer wants to knock down two houses and build 8 flats probably indicates that there are a lot of people who do want said flats. Most of the stuff that the conservationists now try to preserve was built in an era when developers could build what they wanted and delivered what would make them a profit. And because there wasn't a planning system induced artificial shortage quality was better.

[Dave]

I disagree with the first sentence though Tony, having attended a fair number of planning committee meetings I think you can spot the NIMBY's a mile off. I'm all for development and wish more land could be released for building rather than increasing the density of housing on the available land. I could sit down this evening and draw up a sensible development plan for my village which would suit the majority and give a decent 'shape' to the village, I don't like all the infill development as open spaces can be as important to the character of an area as the buildings. I wouldn't trust a developer as far as I could throw them, they always build what's best for them and then convince the buying populace that that's best for them also