To report my neighbour for planning breech

[ginnyrose1]

Our neighbours are currently extending their house and have planning permission to do that. However, when we looked the plans before permission it didn't look like the house was being extended closer to ours and would always be in line with the back of our house. Now they have started, it has definitely been extended closer to our house and it a lot wider then it appear in the plans. The house is completely overbearing on ours and we have a lovely view of the brick wall from our dining room. AIBU to want to complain to the council? DH thinks as they have planning permission not to...
Their planning permission also only stated extension work but they have just knocked part of the house down and then build the new house around part of the old house, which they are slowly knocking down as they go along! Is this allowed?

complaints after building work has started are confidential, its only during the planning application that documents are published.

Some councils are not very good with confidentiality although they are supposed to be. In my career I have seen many breeches, usually down to the fact their over stretched and just don't think about it or poor policy rather than actually meaning to breech it. If you are overly concerned mark correspondence with private & confidential. I would phone the planners and follow up immediately with a letter confirming your conversation. This ensures immediacy and a proper evidence trail.
Each planning dept operates slightly differently and some are more on the ball than others but thanks to a combination of reductions in budgets, massive overhauls in the system and huge changes in policy they are nearly all struggling. Some are even outsourced to private companies which so far seems to be worse than when they were in house (very good at ticking boxes, very poor at using judgement or common sense)
OP how good yours is at reacting may be a lottery but until you actually report (and if necessary chase) you won't know.!

Get one of your Council Planning Officers to come & have a look. You my have misread the plans, or they may be taking the mick. Either way, the Council Planning Officers will be able to advise.

Our neighbours built an extension without planning permission. Somebody else reported then and retrospective permission was refused. Last week their appeal was also dismissed. They have an enforcement notice to knock it down.

I have no sympathy as it is a huge monstrosity and they told us they were building a conservatory! There is not a plane of glass in there. Can't wait for it to come down.

Bear in mind that if you sell your house in the future you will be asked (and must answer truthfully) whether you have been in dispute with your neighbours. A dispute can make a house harder to sell.

What they seem to have done is wrong, but reporting them should be your last resort. Try and resolve it amicably.

babyganoush how on earth is he getting away with that!!! There was a guy on tv recently who did similar and he has to tear it down. You need to go all detective and get evidence he's living there.

Do you have a town or community council? They are usually subsidiary to the planning authority with little real power but if anything like ours are obsessed with planning breaches and will pursue like Ahab chasing Moby Dick, it might be worth getting your local one involved

Definitely report to council.
Neighbours over the road started extending some massive monstrosity which completely overshadowed the street. We were sure it couldn't be in their planning so phoned the council just to check. The council sent someone out to look and they were made to take it down. The council won't know unless you report - and certainly our council didn't say who reported. Do it first thing tomorrow and update us when they have to pull it all down

Valmur it's not a dispute with your neighbours. They may not even know for certain (will suspect!) who reported them. And it sounds like this extension will make the house harder to sell anyway!

If anything it would make your house difficult to sell due to the brick landscape. Or theirs for lack of compliance with their building permission.
The only dispute will be between the neighbours and the council.

we have a detach house with a drive in between our house and the neighbour house. we want to do an extension in the drive. We spoke to the neighbour they were not happy for us to do any extension. We put the plan to planning and we saw the neighbour going to all other neighbours campaigning to object. We saw in the council site all the objection but none of them valid to planning regulation. Our plan was also to extend to the boundary leaving a gap which they objected to. Despite all the objection by the neighbours to the council we received approval to extend as none of the objection was to do with planning regulation. The neighbour next door is very unhappy and now we have to do the party wall award. They received to agree to that, can we start the extension according to our plan.

Music I'm afraid that is not correct. I don't want to turn this into a discussion of legal technicalities but there are several relevant High Court decisions in which judges have confirmed that drawing a distinction between 'complaint' and 'dispute' is wrong. Besides I'm not necessarily saying a complaint is wrong here: I just stress the positives of amicable resolution if possible.

I should also clarify that the question you are asked is "do you know of any disputes about this or any neighbouring property?"

But it won't be a complaint. It will be calling the council's attention to a possible building permission breach.

Be careful how you write it.
For example, ask them if the way they are building it is covered by the planning permission and suggest that it should be inspected.
A complaint would be saying you don't agree with it.

We are just in the process of completing an extension. On the ground it looks huge compared to the plans we submitted yet I know that it is exactly as submitted to the council. As part of the process we had to demolish a (small) part of our house. This was visible on the plans submitted but wasnt explicitly described.

I am not saying you dont have a legitimate complaint just that the actual process and the finished product can look different from what is drawn while being exactly the same as what is drawn IYSWIM.

Our builder accidentally built our kitchen extension 300mm too long as he misread the plans. No one would have known about this if we hadn't been randomly selected for monitoring by the planning department. They came out and measured it and said we were in breach. Thankfully they did not issue an enforcement notice and said we could either apply retrospectively for an amendment to planning permission or wait 4 years - "the four year rule" and it would be OK.

I suspect a complaint about a neighbour breaching planning permission would not be an issue if you declare it honestly, it is noisy and antisocial type disputes that would make a sale tricky.

If you think it is a breach and it is affecting you, you should complain.

My neighbour extended his garage to build a bedroom on the end of his bungalow. The wall extends right across my kitchen and bathroom windows making both dark and blocking the previous view. Planning permission was given in the 70's.

On his other neighbour's attached side - semi detached- he built an extension and erected his fence on his neighbour's land.

The council was not involved but they both hired professional surveyors and my neighbour won despite the council telling me, years later, that he was definitely in the wrong.

If work is not in accordance with the approved plans, contact the planning department. The neighbours will be offered the chance to put things right first, either by reducing the extension back to that approved, or by making an application to amend the original consent. Only if this fails would enforcement be considered. Your details will be confidential as enforcement files are not made public (planning objections will be on the public file, however)...
'Cushy job' - i wish - for every genuine complaint, i get 10 that are malicious or repetitive - that's why your friendly planning officer cannot immediately respond to you.

babyganoush - I'm sorry you've had a bad experience but please don't try to make out that all council workers/planners are the same.

My brother does a similar job to the one you're describing. Your description of "All they do is as little work as possible, but just enough to keep secure their cushy job. They may even send you a letter every now and then wink to prove they "work" is absolutely not reflective of him or anyone I know who works in local government. As for cushy job - ha fucking ha. My brother works his arse off for low pay.

And my district council are fantastic - you're just unlucky by the sounds of it.

Gabi, that may well be true.

They only work 10-4, which to me sounds cushy enough.

There is always a traffic gridlock at 4:15 in our town as that is when all the council workers leave

but I am just jealous/desillusioned I guess...

Thanks for all your advice! Have been out taken some photos and send an email, saying we were concerned. Spoke to a other neighbour who said the local village association had been round and taken some photos and had complained to the council too!

owners and builders push the boundaries and get away with it unless there is a formal complaint, preferably sent by a solicitor. A neighbour halted the building of a new house that was too close to his by this method.

Totally untrue about the working hours babyganoush. Those, in some cases, are the core hours. My brother generally works between 8 and 6, sometimes until 7. It is not a cushy job at all. People who make comments like yours are the ones who also ring my brother and tell him they pay his wages. Offensive and wildly inaccurate.

Yeah defo contact planning