If you stuck a non-timber window in a conservation area near me, I'd be on to you like a sack of bricks.
Do it properly. Decent timber windows are lower maintenance overall than uPVC anyway. OK, you should repaint them every five years. Do this and they will last centuries. uPVC is often bollocksed up within 10 or 20 years and then needs total replacement.
I can, as can anyone who like traditionally constructed buildings. If you don't like nice buildings, don't buy in a conservation area, but get a characterless hutch on a new estate. Please don't ruin conservation areas for the people who care enough to live in one.
You could take up arms on behalf of the lady if you felt so strongly about it.
I've done something similar but it's not the same thing at all as the case under discussion. Many of thesedevelopments are ultimately passed by national government. They're certainly often oiled by money. They can still be opposed and changed but they're not planned by local government officers.
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Has it ever occurred to you that some people might be calling YOU a 'jobsworth'? It all depends on where you're standing.
Oh well, if it's OK for TV it MUST be good!
Look, she chose to live in a conservation area, she must have known and accepted the restrictions. If she had polio she hasn't recently contracted it.
No, there were, according to the report, other issues than a lightweight door.
And done the same for all the other abuses in the area? A line has to be drawn - and kept to.
Or it could be because there are pre-determined penalites for offences ...
I don't live in a conservation area but one starts at the other side of the street and I've been very pleased that restrictions have been enforced in that area otherwise we'd now be overlooked by a very high building and no trees.
I firmly believe that, on the whole, planning is going the right way. Nothing will ever be perfect and some individuals might not like restrictions but they have a choice, they can move to a nice new estate.
Yes, the comfort factor is the best benefit of dg. It's not just lack of draughts through gaps, it's the lack of downflow of cold air from the windows.
Some of us have had CA status foisted on us - last December in my case. No one asked me whether I wanted this. Fortunately my neighbour is a planning officer in another borough and got wind that it was happening. Her response: would I cut down the big tree in my garden that overshadowed hers, since once the CA came in I wouldn't be able to do this without council permission which probably wouldn't be forthcoming. I liked the tree but could see her point so down the tree came. But the truth is I no longer own my garden the council does.
No, I planted it myself 25 years ago. But the forthcoming CA designation made removing it a now or never matter. Likewise my neighbour knocked his front wall down to make the front garden a forecourt for parking: he couldn't take the risk of this being disallowed in the future.
However there is also such a thing as common sense and of right and wrong.
In this case, the right thing to do would have been not to have applied the law and prosecute the lady.
I'll give you another example in the news today. The BBC news site is carrying an article that the volunteers from a charitable organisation involved in the attempted rescue of the Thames whale received parking tickets for £300 from jobsworths employed by TFL.
I was just about to contact them and offer to pay their tickets but just read on the charity's web site that somebody with a sense of decency at Westminster City Council has offered to cancel them. I'm going to send them a donation anyway
That is the difference between stupid and inappropriate application of law by public sector employees and doing the right thing.
If only that was true Andy, the worst monstrosities are buildings erected since planning laws came in just after WW2. What it really needs is planning permission being separated from the Council, who themselves build whatever they like wherever they like.
That would be an even better solution. In another post on this thread, I described an experience where they tried to do just that and were forced to back down.
That doesn't alter the fact that the OP is perfectly entitled to install upvc windows if that is what they desire.
If you approached me with that attitude, if I decided I wanted to replace my wooden windows with upvc, you'd get an earful of abuse at the very least.
My house belongs to me and if I decide to make relatively minor alterations to it, then I will. If you don't like upvc, that's your problem, not mine.
That sentence and the next are mutually exclusive.
I've got both and the wooden windows need far more maintenance than the upvc.
Mine are 15 years old and work just as well as they did when they were installed
Don't be so patronising. I didn't decide to buy in a conservation area, the village I live in became one after I moved in. Oddly enough, my house is the 1800s equivalent of a "characterless hutch", a two-up, two-down semi built from the cheapest materials available (bricks from local clay). If upvc windows had been available then they wouldn't have been used, not because they "don't fit" but because they would have been far more expensive than wooden windows from local materials.
If a house with upvc windows "ruins" a conservation area for you, then you're far too sensitive for this life.
Unless the situation has changed in the last 15 years, he can ask for whatever he likes but you are under no obligation to do as he requests unless your house is listed or within the curtilage of a listed building or has some sort of condition imposed on it by previous planning consents etc.
Merely being in a conservation area does not prevent upvc windows being installed.
In principle it doesn't (on a single family house) - it's permitted development, but Councils can take away PD rights with an Article 4 direction and often do in CA's.
I seem to have stirred up some interesting responses. Thanks to all for the replies. To clarify the area has only recently been designated a conservation area. The houses vary from 60's built in one area to turn of the century in another. There is a complete mixture of styles from brick built or rendered houses to brick built or rendered bungalows all with a mixture of timber or plastic windows. The roofing materials vary from modern pantiles to rosemary tiles to slate and to artificial slate. Planning permission was granted and no conditions have been imposed regarding plastic windows. The shell of the house has been built and particular attention has been given to stone cills and heads towards the front elevation. Corbelled brick detail and traditional slate. I have used rise and fall brackets so there are no fascias to paint and have built, what I believe, is a very low maintenance and in keeping traditional house. I know that this sounds contradictory but I despise the thought of having to repaint timber windows. My earliest memories are of terrible draughty uncomfortable howling windows! I am not trying to cheapen the situation either. I have sourced some very authentic sash windows that are quality made using white u.p.v.c., and they are not cheap. I recently met with the conservation chappy to finalise the corbelling detail. At this meeting he expressed his dislike for plastic windows. My first meeting with him he agreed to them on the basis that they were prolific within the area, bit of a trade of to me agreeing slate as oposed to rosemary tiles. What really narks me is that at least three houses within the area have changed the windows to plastic since it became a conservation area, seemingly unchallenged. Is it just an opinion or enforceable? I intend to ask someone from planning to approve in writing the final details as i did with the bricks and slates. Just wanted to gather as much info to prepare myself. Thanks all.
This depends on whether you believe that people should be free to make their own choices or not.
The trouble with conservation policies is that they impose costs on society which go unseen. To give one small example, my church is in a CA and has 150 year old buildings which are far from ideal and no amount of money will do more than lessen their shortcomings. If we were free to knock down most of what we have an rebuild, we could have a building that would be providing first class facilities for community activities all week long. But our planners would fight tooth and nail to stop this happening: the people who would benefit from such a community resource just don't matter. The minority who get up the petitions do.
Remember the promise of the neutron bomb: destroy people and leave the buildings standing. It seems to be the philosophy of many planning officers.
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