Neighbours Garden Office

[Soontobesingles]

My neighbours have recently started having work done to add an office/summer house thing to their garden. No planning permission and it is absolutely massive - to the point it will put 1/2 my lovey sunny garden in shade. I have told them that it is too high and they need planning permission. Builders insisting they don’t as something to do with a slope in the garden but rules are about height from foundations. Anyway, I have said I will report if it isn’t sufficiently reduced and both neighbour and builders are going mad saying £1,000s already spent on materials and plans, labour etc. AIBU to say I don’t care an will report? My garden is my sanctuary and many of my plants will die if shaded year round.

100% report it … our council has easy web portal. For these issues. They investigate all & reply.

only reason to not report …. Is build your own behemoth garden office

I would be phoning the planning office immediately.

Report to the councils Building Control section and let them decide if it’s okay or not- best to do it now. They may have to reduce the height.

that sums it up perfectly.

Do report.

You should call yourself bottylizzy87

HTH 😀

If they do ignore you, keep on at them. Write every week, or every day if you have to
As pp have said, if it's legal they've got no worries! If they get the hump tell them they have shadowed your garden and that's really shitty of them .... they caused the issue not you - good luck!

Surely if there is a slope in their garden the top of the building should be even lower than what it is now? If it’s still to high when it’s on a slope then it must be way over legal height?

Unless the slope goes the other way towards the house instead of away from it line I’m presuming?

The people across the road from me have done exactly the same, also on a sloping site.

A former colleague lives in the house that backs on to them. They were livid, as the slope means that the "garden office" rises several feet above his fence and shades his garden. They contacted the council, who said that it didn't need planning permission, partly because it had no cooking facilities and therefore couldn't be used as a dwelling, and that height wasn't an issue because the building was within the permitted height at the front.

However, it does have a toilet and shower room. Within weeks of it being finished, it was listed on airbnb, with a kettle, toaster and microwave clearly visible in the pictures. Former colleague was livid, and got on to the council, who said it still doesn't count as a dwelling because the microwave etc doesn't constitute "cooking facilities".

For years, it was used regularly by airbnbers, who often seemed to rock up in two cars in a street where parking is very limited. On more than one occasion, I had people knock on my door, sometimes very late at night, because they've mislaid the number for the keysafe and can't get in, and the owners were away. Thankfully, they rarely have guests these days and it's no longer listed on airbnb.

They managed to piss off loads of people at our end of the road though, especially as they've now got planning permission to extend the house sideways which will near double the size of it.

I don't think YABU, OP, but sadly I doubt if there's anything you can do about it.

report it now - today
every day you dilly dally means they do more work and spend more money
anyway the sooner it is reported the sooner the issue is resolved

The 2.5 meters is measured from the point nearest their building, so if the ground slopes away it's theoretically possible for it to be a lot higher by the time it reaches the boundary. That said, if they are small gardens that would need to be one hell of a slope. Also it can't take up more than 50% of the land surrounding the property.
We are deep in planning and PD issues for an outbuilding so have some first hand knowledge of all this.

Report it. Planning departments are here for this sort of thing. If the extension is actually ok within the rules, the planning department with say it's fine. There will be no punishment for you for questioning it. If it isn't, then they will most probably force the neighbours to knock it down and get permission for something different! Obviously your neighbours may not be nice to you anymore, but if they build something like this without permission, they don't sound like they care about you much anyway.

Presumably you've already been onto the council to report it? If not, why on earth not? do it today @Soontobesingles

4.5 m is nearly house height, my garden office is 2.5m - yes I'd report that!

Look up the rules for height restrictions within a metre of the boundary. In our area it can't go over 2.5m at that point.

100% report it, if they have done everything correctly they don’t need to worry about how much they’ve already spent.

Same in our London borough. 2.5m and it also has to be within so many cm of the boundary. We have a garden office as do most of the houses in our area these days.

Somebody mentioned Building Control. It's not them, they just want to know it won't fall down. Planning is what you need. If you have half-decent local councillors, ask one of them for help. If you don't know who your councillor is, use https://www.writetothem.com/ It's the Borough or District councillor that you need as opposed to county or whatever.

Off topic but I have missed BizzyLizzy, cos she's been deleted and now I'm very curious.

It sounds way too high. Definitely report. They also need working space behind it so it should be at least 1 metre from your boundary not right up to it. Especially important if it has a roof overhang or roof is sloping backwards and will run into your garden. And obviously if it’s up to fence as well as guttering / running off issues they also won’t be able to maintain the back of it.

Now you have 375 unqualified and mostly inaccurate responses get onto the council for the only opinion that counts

If you search under that username they all seem to be ChatGPT posts. Have reported to MN

With my local council planning hat on, report to development control in the first instance, and they will refer to their enforcement team or a planning officer. Building control isn’t the right place for this.

I'd definitely report it in this case.
The fact they're so bothered by the potential of you doing so is enough to show they already know they shouldn't be doing it. The money spent/wasted on not doing it correctly is their issue.

I would be hotfooting it down to the council offices ASAP. Shading half your garden is egregious. Why can't they put it on the other side of their property?

Going to have a look now, thank you