Gutted a new house is being built directly facing my back garden?

[mentalhealth323]

I know this is a first world problem and the whole process I’ve deliberately not been a biased nimby.

Progress must happen, people need houses and don’t ever buy a house for the view (if you don’t own it).

I bloody well love my house, it’s nothing fancy, I’m not the greatest area but the back garden is long and very private. The USP for the house was the garden (ex council post war house) and the element of privacy.

Being able to go into the garden in a towel to grab clean washing, gardening in a bikini, work out without having to worry that I can only manage one push up…. Drink wine for five nights straight listening to my guilty playlist.

It looks like it’s going to be finalised (there’s already construction workers placing flags outside) and there’s going to be a huge three storey house built 10ms away from my garden fence directly opposite my house. Their fence will be on my boundary. There’s no way of blocking them from having the perfect view of 100% of my garden.

I didn’t contest the planning permission as they’re building facilities/didn’t want to be a nimby - it’s also a nationwide new build company and the council was very much on board… didn’t think we’d have a leg to stand on. I’ve known for the plans for a couple of weeks and I’m absolutely gutted/can’t shake it off.

Maybe it varies from council to council. Loads of objections upheld round here. Lots of extensions had to be replanned to avoid overlooking neighbours/being too tall/not fitting in with the surroundings.

@Delatron

I always found the council to be on the side of the person objecting rather than the developers and architects. It’s normally hard to get a development through that overlooks and non previously overlooked house.

When you do extensions you have to be very careful.

I have not found this!

We have bamboo at the end of our garden (though agree it’s a menace and gets everywhere. Then some lovely tall conifers. I forget there’s a house there.

Also consider putting in some garden structures for more privacy - a summer house, a pergola with climbing roses, a canopy for shade in summer.

It’s normally hard to get a development through that overlooks and non previously overlooked house.
Perhaps for a single house, but around here there are literally hundreds of people who've lost their open views in just the last 5 years due to massive new estates being approved on green field sites.

I voted YABU because you should have contested - might have built something more sympathetic to you if you had. You didn't need to stop it, just have a say in what it's like / how it overlooked you. Nothing gained by being a martyr now

@Delatron

Maybe it varies from council to council. Loads of objections upheld round here. Lots of extensions had to be replanned to avoid overlooking neighbours/being too tall/not fitting in with the surroundings.

The difference between individuals and big building companies. Councils are much much stricter with individuals because they can be.

Large builders ignore conditions and/or get them changed or overturned afterwards.

On one estate here that's just been completed the developer removed a hedge completely that was supposed to stay. The council took no action. Now on the same estate, now all the the houses are built they are in contravention of a condition requiring them to fund and complete work to a road junction. They have submitted a request to have the condition removed, even though they agreed to it at the start.

In my opinion they are cunts who don't care about existing residents - or even their buyers as long as they have got their money.

Same here have a SW facing garden that is in shade most of the day.
I asked my local cllr and he said if it was an extension on an existing dwelling it would not be allowed. The council are allowed as they are 76er pressure to meet new housing targets and the rule didn’t apply. It’s a joke, don’t obeject to the development as such but it is a twenty metre high property, maybe a smaller one would have been more suitable.

What will be on the top floor overlooking your garden?

We’re overlooked by a three storey house. And in fact we are a three storey house too. New builds close together. Their top floor back windows are a bathroom and a dressing room off the top floor master suite. So no one is standing looking out at me from there.

My top floor is my study, so I’m looking out the window all day. But I can’t see a great deal of the gardens really.

We also have a lot of green screening in ours and neighbours gardens, and they’re only 5 years old so it’s all grown up pretty quickly.

If he gutted too. I’d rather have no view to start with than a view that risks being taken away.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves Privacy film on Windows can help a lot. (In a previous house, we had to access ours by walking a long a foot path 5metres away from the next row of houses patio doors. You don't intentionally look but you walk out of your front door directly towards them. The privacy film definitely obscured the view)

My mam lives in town and her front window is very low down. People can't really see in (you'd have to press you face right to the window) but the amount of people that check themselves out walking passed is so funny!

@DenverDoer

I really feel for you. Trying to house hunt now for a house with privacy, but every facing field I think 'but what if they build there!'

Look at landowners and zone in on places like Cornwall- the land is owned by people who don’t want it developed 🙌

Bamboo is a great screening plant

YANBU, but you should have really objected if it meant being overlooked, may not have changed anything but you don't know until you try, and the more objections there are the more likely it is planners will look more closely at the proposal- orientation of houses, planting schemes for boundaries etc to lessen impact.
Anyway I would be gutted too and definitely be looking at planting trees and looking at gazebos etc to try and soften the impact.

OK you don't want to be a nimby, but you're not necessarily powerless if building hasn't started yet. Contact the council and share your concerns.

Ahhh that’s sad OP. When we sold our last house our south facing garden was going to be overlooked by some townhouses that would have been able to see directly into our garden and no doubt would have blocked the light as well. I thought we would struggle to sell but the buyers didn’t seem to mind!

Yes I understand it’s more difficult going up against big developers. I’d still lodge a late objectionswith the council though.

I'm sorry, that's awful.

You are not being unreasonable in having these feelings. Have you checked whether the Planning permission included any provision for screening your properties from one another? Since you have a long garden and they are 30feet away (at least) from your boundary they won't actually be able to see into your house directly, at least without binoculars , and there are laws about that. I assume you have neighbours either side ? Can't they already see into your garden, at least from upstairs ?

@LndnGrl

I didn’t contest the planning permission as they’re building facilities/didn’t want to be a nimby

You can't really complain now then. You should have contested it and got them to make the house windows face a different way.

But do they listen? Half the time I think public consultations are just lip service just to keep the locals happy but the developers build the houses anyway...

I prefer overlooked houses. Less chance of being violently robbed like a lot of people from by background are. So think of the positives and plant a hedge / trees in the back if you want privacy. But I do agree with others that you are a bit unreasonable to expect total privacy when you live adjacent to farmland you don’t own.

YANBU, OP. I hate the amount of housebuilding and massive new estates going up all over the country. It's shit on so many levels - especially since 'affordable' housing is an absolute joke and thousands of people can't afford to buy many of the properties being built.

My parents live in an area where there's deemed to be some of the last excellent quality arable farmland in the county - and houses are planned to be built over most of it. The loss of wildlife habitat and hedgerows will be catastrophic.

We all need to join campaign and pressure groups in our local areas to voice our opposition.

Yes, housing is needed, but there's plenty of brownfield sites that just aren't being utilised, along with infill sites that could provide affordable town centre housing. Developers just aren't interested in sites they have to clean up before building starts, nor are they interested in infill sites that won't enable them to make large profits.

One recent housing development, in an area that's one of the poorest in my county, was advertising houses built on farmland starting at around 25 x the average local salary. It made me want to burn the fucking lot of them down. The CGI images all showed expensive cars on the driveways and commuter-types walking along the street - so it was blindingly obvious the housing wasn't in any way aimed at local people.

Our garden was overlooked on both sides, and at the back.
We used multi stemmed silver birches for screening. They're not evergreen but have masses of thin white branches which blur the view but, unlike evergreens, let the light in in winter.
In summer it's completely private as covered in leaves.

Do you think the New build will effect your daylight in to the habitable rooms ? This may be your only way to object, privacy is not a planning regulations. We deal with this kind of thing . Happy if you want to PM and I can take a look

There’s a difference between expecting total privacy and being directly and completely overlooked. And it wouldn’t be helpful if everyone who backs on to agricultural land buys it - where do we grow food then?
There’s no solution to this, though it would be more space-efficient & less of an environmental impact if people lived in the smallest house that would accommodate them rather than the biggest one they could afford.

It's disappointing as it wasn't like that when you bought it. Mine is overlooked by neighbours to the side, but it was like that when we bought it.
We've had a large block of flats built just down the road. It was sensible to turn it into flats as it was previously an office, but the plans were very misleading. The artist impression showed 5 storeys and it looked like it would be set lower down like the buildings next to it, but it's 6 storeys and the bottom one is raised up and right next the road. It sticks out like a sore thumb as the rest of the road is houses or low rise flats. Where I live it seems that affluent roads are able to prevent ALL development and the counsellors boast about this in their literature come election time, whereas less affluent roads are "anything goes/build em high" even though this is out of character of the roads