To think neighbours are being selfish over extension?

[nearlynot]

Extension is ground and first floor, 5.5 meters long, with ground level extending a bit further. West facing.

Is neighbour BU to object if half the garden will have no extension or shadowing. Neighbour always home and claims it will be detrimental to have shadow over back of the house/windows. Who is BU?

So shove your biscuit up your arse - sideways

Duly chastened. Will do! searches fruitlessly for self-flagellating emoji

Incidentally, might I suggest that OP shows my (clearly) controversial earlier post to her neighbour, for whom it was originally intended?

Seriously though OP, hope you win this fight. What your neighbour is proposing is scandalous and extremely anti-social 😡

@peninsulapanic - read the rest of the OP’s comments before getting nasty. Her neighbours want to do this to her property. The original OP is annoyingly phrased but your response is grossly unwarranted.

So, it’s not unreasonable for them to not want HALF of their garden to be impacted by YOUR extension!

How you you feel if the shoe was on the other foot?

You are just thinking about you and not how others are impacted.

Why are so many posters NRTFT and just posting stupid responses to the OP? Seriously, you are not helping unless you RTFT!

YANBU.

I would complain and block planning permission.
My parents who are just lovely to the point they get shafted never said anything when their nieghbour wanted to build a porch at the front. He was a nice man blah blah blah
Turns out the porch was the full length of the house and now their lounge is in permanent darkness from 1PM. So much so they have to put the big light on

That would have been apparent if they’d checked the plans on the planning portal, PityParty. It’s actually fairly stupid not to.

74
My parents are not stupid just trusting.
Hope you feel good for saying that though whatever you need to make you feel superior

I would object to those plans and I’d get my solicitor involved. It’s awful.

Huge extension. How annoying for you.

@pinyinchahua

Thank you for taking the trouble to post in order to tell me how 'wrong' I am. My original post was made because of an error of judgement, which I've admitted and consequently addressed the OP directly in my post at 17:21:04

Why have you then come on 10 minutes later to have a go at me?! Have you RTFT yourself?

sunshinesupermum
To be fair to other posters the whole way the situation is explained is convoluted and difficult to follow.
It would have got the same response to say which neighbour they are.

We used to have neighbours who planned a huge, ugly, brick extension in their garden, just one storey but tall and close to the wall. We objected as did other neighbour who would have been more affected by the loss of light. The council rejected the plans and made it clear that they would not pass plans for any extension of this type. I think that the idea of contacting your local councillor is very good, but the most important thing is to lodge an objection, stating that the extension is much bigger than any other local permitted plans.

I’m pretty sure that you can get legal advice (separate to planning) Which will allow you to sue them for loss of light, google it, there are companies who specialise. Be a hard ass about it as that’s a ridiculous extension (and I say that as someone currently building an extension). Get the advice and then let them know that your intention will be to sue for loss of light.

The only issue is whether it meets planning policy or not. The planning officer will look at the planning issues. There are guidelines regarding overlooking etc, size/scale, angles between neighbouring issues. No point at all in involving a solicitor as very few decisions can be judicially reviewed. If you want to object use planning readons, not emotions. You cannot sue for loss of light that is incorrect....You can ask for it to be 'called in' for determination by committee rather than by a planning officer...

Why are people saying it’s selfish to have an extension? We needed more space as unexpectedly had an increase in children needing to live with us, think parent deceased/ irreconcilable differences, a traumatic event. We could afford to move due to cost of local housing and logistics of moving to another area, and unable to get an affordable mortgage, there was no other option. I think people building a new house in their garden to sell for profit shouldn’t be allowed, removing the little green space we have. Our extension only build where there were previously outbuildings and hard standing. I think it’s pretty idiotic to say someone should move as this is an expensive and hugely stressful event not everyone can afford. Extending is the cheaper option, I’m not talking about mega rich basement swimming pool extensions either!

Where I live 6m back extensions are extremely common and you don't need planning permission as they fall under permitted development. There are formal rules provided by the council on light blocking etc that they must comply with, though. Even if all that's in place where you live, you still need to be respectful of your neighbours during the build, and listen to their point of view. You should also do things that they ask for even if you don't have to by law, eg, if they ask you not to work on Saturday afternoons then don't. You don't sound willing to do this, which is very selfish.

Very unreasonable. We've put up with a year of noise and dirt (7 days a week) and skip drivers and delivery drivers banging on our door at all hours asking us to move our car out of the way, just so that our dear neighbours can have their house doubled in size. Move somewhere bigger!

Try www.findmyshadow.com which lets you see how and where the sun will cast shadows in relation to structures.

I agree our neighbours did a huge side extension, 2 adults, one daughter.

Cue mass of builders, swearing, vans on our drive, blocked in, scaffolding, men in the windows or walking past daily, kids couldn’t play in the garden all summer, dog escaped, it’s bloody awful for the neighbours who get all the hassle of a build and none of the benefit.

I have read the thread and just wanted to say OP you are so not BU. What an awful and selfish extension to build. The back of your house will be forever in shade as it will block the sun until evening and that is just ridiculous particularly as they could mitigate slightly by swapping the longest side which as you say blocks nothing for neighbour 1.

What they are essentially doing is devaluing your house and turning into a place you would never have chosen to buy and if that isn’t selfish I don’t know what is.

Op why would you need access across their plot to convert a downstairs room? Just wondering if someone out there can reassure you that this can be done regardless?

I was in a similar situation a couple of years ago with our neighbours’ proposed extension blocking the sunlight in the part of our garden closest to our house.

I spoke to a friend who is a planning professional and they helped me work out reasonable grounds for objection. The main one for us was loss of amenity as we use that part of the garden a lot. A second one was that the drawings did not show the new shadow on our garden.

I contacted our councillors and sent them photos of our garden and explained how we would be affected.

The number of objections can influence decision of whether the application is approved or not, so each member of the family living at my address objected.

I contacted our other neighbours and asked them to object. Several did.

My councillors were brilliant and spoke directly to planning. Planning required my neighbours first to submit new drawings showing the shadows on our garden. Then I think they must have advised them that their plans were most likely to be refused, because they were quietly redrawn.

The neighbours later resubmitted a greatly revised application which will affect us at all.

So now all we have to contend with is months and months of noisy building work with digging, sawing, drilling, hammering, noisy men’s voices, radio music etc, up to 7pm 6 days a week. But at least when it’s finished our garden will again be sunny and peaceful.

The building noise is awful. My health has been affected. I have tried to remain civil with the neighbours but our relationship is most definitely affected. They have every right to build on their land but it’s hard to believe they spared much of a thought for the impact of their actions on us.

*a greatly revised application which will hardly affect us at all