to not contribute towards my neighbours' extension

[cocoachannel]

We live in a terrace house and have recently submitted an application for planning permission to extend our first floor so one of the bedrooms goes from being a box room to a liveable in single bedroom- a fairly minor extension of a few foot squared, which many other houses on our road have already done.

Our next door neighbour spoke to us over the garden fence this evening and told us he'd like to do the same work and would we contribute to his extension- that way he won't object to our planning application.

I am so shocked at this and DH told him resolutely 'no', but I wonder whether anyone else has been in this situation and had to relent?

And the other thing to bear in mind is that if your neighbour objects on reasonable planning grounds even if he is doing it to try and extort money, and the objection is valid, planning permission will be refused.

But. The application would have been refused anyway, whether he objected or not, so any monies paid for him to withdraw an objection would be completely wasted.

One of our neighbours asked us to sell our house to her daughter rather than build an extension, or else she would object to the planning application.

We went ahead with the planning application, she objected but her comments made her look a total loon, and permission was granted first time