AIBU to be upset by my neighbours' huge extension?

[ElfinsMum]

We (family of 5) live in a 30 year old property built on a small site that was originally our neighbour's garden. We bought several years ago from them. At that time, they were doing a renovation on the old cottage as the grandmother had died so that the early 20s DGD and her partner could move in. At the time i was a bit 🤔about it if i'm honest just because my (wealthy as it happens) parents have never and would never give me a house, let alone spend weeks personally slaving over a full blown renovation for me. Since then we have lived perfectly peacefully next door to them.

Now they are doing a large extension. They have bulldozed their whole back garden and the final house will now stretch all the way along our boundary front to back, as well as adding an extra storey to overlook our whole bungalow. The builders literally have to work on our land all day to build it. They have even had to remove a small section of our drive to lay foundations. They have moved out for the duration, i assume back with mum and dad for free. We are stuck here.

I know i am not being unreasonable to worry that their huge new extension will be ugly, dominate our space, reduce our privacy and probably damage the value of our house.

BUT we love living here, love the area, school, public transport, other neighbours etc. Our house is worn and lived in as everyone's is that is 15 years into this parenting caper.

I am aware, as you will now be, that I am being bitter and twisted on the subject. How can i continue to like living in our home? How do i avoid turning into one of THOSE people that has a stupid one-sided vendetta with the neighbours? How do i avoid being resentful that they will have a massive, polished home for the two of them, while we slum it over here with 5 of us in a cottage with one bathroom and a kitchen made of MDF? How do i forgive them for choosing to use every centimetre of their land when they must know it is at our expense?

P.S. The development meets local planning regs to the milimetre so don't bother with planning arguments.

I feel and share your pain OP.
Similar happened here - an extension that uses every permisssable square inch. Right up to our boundary. Towers over. Extends more than 10m beyond including a massive raised patio and enormous balcony. Also razed down all their lovely trees.
You couldn't pay me to live in their ugly house but it dominates every back window view. I can't wait to move out but need to wait until the children are grown.
Some people are just not nice neighbours nor nice people. I ignore them. That's all I can do.

Ok, now they have bust through our water main. NOW I am angry!! They turned off our water without even telling us.

Have texted the site manager and asked for a meeting about "ways of working".

Yeah this my issue @oviraptor21 We are right at the stage where we can't easily move. Kids in secondary, older one doing exams.

Oh and also yes @oviraptor21 to garden destruction! The grandparents were very green fingered, beautiful cottage gardens. Once this is finished there will be barely a blade of grass.

OMG, they’ve turned off your water and you’ve sent a text. I wish I was as chilled as you are. That’s nuts.

Because they bust through a main by accident, they can hardly leave it on and flood them.

Well quite, but my point being that turning the water off is just the latest in a string of almost unbelievable events which the OP is taking remarkably calmly.

In the uk you can change windows with no pp. Certainly remove them from overlooking but you just get a huge wall then! Neither is great.

I’m not sure she is calm but if she is all credit too her, she doesn’t need randoms on line trying to whip her into a frenzy for their own entertainment. There was an accident, it happened. Staying calm is admirable.

I agree there’s no point in pitching a fit over an accident, but in fact the PP’s unusual passivity and wet lettuce-ry has created the entire situation whereby she didn’t object to planning for an extension that she says significantly impairs her privacy, or to their builders accessing her property and wrecking her garden. One wonders if she has a pulse.

This I agree with , which makes me wonder if it’s as bad as she says or if there was no reasonable grounds for an objection, and she’s just so jealous she’s exaggerating how bad it is. She’d not be the first. I suspect it’s not she’s inert, it’s that the extension is fine, there is nothing to object to, note she’s not entitled to light, and it’s all been done correctly, but she’s so jealous as she is seeing it go up she’s exaggerating the scale of it.

This is a tad harsh!
LA's absolutely do not care about neighbours, building regs & planning restrictions have become very lax. Hopefully someone will build along your perimeter at some point & you can reflect on, while dealing with juvenile feelings!

Did they ask if they could use your garden?
This should have been discussed before they even started. If not, then they are trespassing.

Suggest that all work is stopped until such time as compensation has been agreed to, for the disruption and reconstruction of your garden.

Do some people live in a fantasy world on what planet would this happen, she can refuse, they can continue another way.

I really think there should be stricter legislation to stop people building such huge extensions and building on their gardens and cutting down trees

i thought we were trying to protect the environment

sorry you are experiencing this

Maybe use this experience as “permission” to release yourself from this @ElfinsMum and please yourself a bit more. If they don’t care about you why should you care what others think about your choices?

To all those accusing me of passivity, I would say I don't fully recognise this. I mean I posted to ask how to overcome the anger I was feeling towards our neighbours, recognising that there is this huge assymetry where they aren't thinking about us at all (although they kind of had to after the water leak debacle and they did apologise).

However, I do try very hard to only pick fights I will win. I have learnt this projects greater authority at work. I really hate the idea of being seen as a small, angry, powerless person.

I see a divide between those saying "You should exercise your rights to complain" and "Planning authorities don't actually give a shit about neighbours". I also see that those with personal experience of a neighbour doing a large extension mainly fall in the latter camp. I used to work for UK gov including for a little while with planners. If an individual development meets the local code (as this has been carefully designed to just do), in my limited experience neighbour complaints are just seen as inevitable noise and totally ignored.

So you are saying that I should be fine with any development that meets the (UK) light and privacy legislation? You wouldn't be at all sad that someone else gets to rip out your green, leafy, shady outlook and replace it with metal fences and brick walls?

I dont know about the laws in the country where you are located. In this country you can charge for the use of your land if the workmen have to access it to build the extension. There also has to be something called a party wall agreement whereby the other party pays for your surveyor. Their job is to oversee the building process where it adjoins your property and deal with any difficulties. At the end of the build if they refused to pay to restore your garden you could take them to small claims court.

Take plenty of photographs to document the damage and the entire process.

I'm not in Sydney but this article in today's Guardian Australia exactly describes what our neighbours are doing: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/mar/18/where-have-all-our-front-gardens-gone-sydneys-super-sized-driveways-eat-into-yards

And the very light planning controls on these individual builds.

Good of you for coming back OP. I’m sorry for the incorrect accusation. I think I mis-phrased what I was trying to say. You’re quite right you can act without anger, I guess I just mean I personally would have intervened at the first instant they were on my property.
Hope you’ve got your water back.

Neighbours builds can be stressful, even if it is managed well.

I would get in touch with your neighbours and discuss but if you can't do that then you can speak to the planning officer about your experiences as some of what you have posted about the build situation doesn't sound right to me.

Have you given permission for the builders to have access to your land all day?

If you have then you can still specify hours so you have some quiet time.

Were you informed / gave permission for the section of the drive to be removed?

They should then pay for any repair works to the drive afterwards. Same for any damage to any of your garden due to access etc. When the work is complete they should put things back to how they were before they started work.

I think your own thinking is limiting you here, and trapping you in this weird passivity. Objecting to planning permission applied for by neighbours, and/or communicating with the neighbours about your concerns about encroaching on your own space, aren't going to make you be 'seen as a small, angry, powerless person'. It's weird that you leap straight to 'anger' here -- objecting is about making your voice heard and putting your issues with a planned build out into the public domain for consideration by planning authorities.

And not objecting doesn't seem to have made you any less angry.

Having not objected, you then posted on Mn seething with fury that your neighbours hadn't anticipated your concerns which you had not expressed to them. You sound like 'Can't win, don't try', but can't you see that it isn't serving you?

If you'd spoken to your neighbours about planning, as well as objecting, regardless of the outcome of the objection, you'd have presumably thrashed out issues to do with the build, access to your land etc. Even if the water main thing had still happened, as accidents do, you wouldn't be looking at a ruined garden and worrying whether it was 'unreasonable' to ask for it to be restored.

Ok, discussion had with site manager. Damaged garden and driveway will be restored. There will be no further damage to the rest of the garden. The builders will ask in future about using our driveway, when we might need to get our car out etc. And they will warn us and if possible schedule any drops to water/power.

In less good news, it's a minimum of 5 months more til completion. Sigh.

He's a nice guy. He apologised several times that the work is inconveniencing us so much.

Totally disagree that I should need to tell my neighbours that their massive extension to the very corners of their block is selfish. Or that their 6 month building project right next to our house is going to be a pain in our arses.

That's fucking obvious to everyone, including them.