loft conversions and dormers

[reply]

Hello,

I've noticed that most houses on this street have loft conversions but the dormers are all on the rear of the property. Does planning permission not let you build dormers on the front because I would have expected people to build dormers front and back to maximise headroom?

My loft conversion is a bedroom with a dormer and a small en suite built in the corner. This is not in a dormer and has a sloping wall. I'm wondering if one day I could have the en suite converted into a dormer to give more useable space. Is there any reason this would not be possible?

Thanks, Stephen.

[Tricky Dicky]

A lot depends on where you live, on most housing estates you would probably get planning permission easily. My daughter lived in tourist town dominate d by stone built Victorian houses and you were not allowed to alter the roo fline facing the road even though the buildings were not listed, however yo u could get permission for dormers facing to the rear. Also you could add a dormer to the front if other neighbouring houses had them as part of the o riginal design but they had to have pitched roofs, no flat roofs etc.

Richard

[sm_jamieson]

In this area box dormers on the front are basically banned - very rare a new one will get planning, plus not covered by permitted development. Why ? Because they look horrible I suppose ! Simon.

[John Rumm]

Historically, you could build most loft conversions without planning permission. They are included under permitted development rights. One of the limitations of building this way was that you were not permitted to make major changes to the front elevation of the property. So many elected to not fit front dormers and save the cost of going through the PP process.

Note that the rules changed some years back, and now PP is more often required anyway.

Its technically doable. Whether its worth the cost is another matter.

[Tim+]

I was passing a terraced row of houses yesterday where every house had a different design of dormer. They did, as you say, look s**te. "Oh well"' I thought, "at least the fronts won't look so bad". As i carried on i saw that all the "fronts" were just as bad. It was only then that I realised that these were terraces of back-to-back mill workers cottages, which, without their extensions, would have been tiny.

Tim

[reply]

Has anyone had a dormer "fitted" recently? What sort of ballpark figure do they cost?

I agree that I would want a pitched one to make it look nicer.

Thanks, Stephen.

[John Rumm]

I think I worked out at the time I did my loft conversion (11 years ago) that fitting a front dormer would had added at most a couple of thousand to the the overall cost (some of which would have been for PP). With hindsight I probably should have done it - although its a moot point since I sold that house anyway.

Obviously if you get a builder in to do it then its going to cost more.

You can make what looks like a pair of pitched roof dormers close together which on the inside is actually one wide dormer. e.g@

Doing a dormer of this type is quite DIYable.

[sm_jamieson]

Interesting, that type of thing might well get planning permissions, since it does not look like a box dormer. Simon.

[John Rumm]

That actual dormer obviously did get PP ;-)

(in fact there are some front facing box dormers about as well)

Most go for some form of tiled roof though - either like in the picture, or with a vestigial perimeter bit around what ultimately is a flat roof.