I am not unreasonable, but I do need to rant and have sympathy and advice, so am posting here...........ARGH about the planning people!!!!

[psychomum5]

We have been given some money from DH's late grandma to do our house up a bit.

We have chosen to replace the crumbling lean-to conservatory on the side of the house and make it bigger and to include a futility room.

Soooooooooo, we had plans and drawings made and put them in for planning.....

all well and good you might think??!!

Not so...........

Today we received a letter. In said letter it says that planning is to be discussed (there are orange signs up for people to know about and object if they so wish) at the end of the month, but they have seen from the drawings that there is already a rear extension and it does not have covenance (sp?).....

We did not understand this, so DH rang when he got home from work.....

Well, seems that even tho we bought our house as it is, 12yrs ago, and it went thro all the checks etc as is normal for such a sale, it seems to have slipped everybodies notice that the rear extension on our house was put up without planning

and it was built over 18yrs ago, by the first occupants, and has been sold twice since!!!

It has also had the current conservatory there for that time too, we are just asking to replace and extend it slightly, and as DH is a bricklayer/builder, and it is going slightly closer to the road (we live on a corner), he knew we needed planning.

but now this........

so

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

The world has pissed me off good and proper now

we don;t know where we stand now, the council are completely confused that we had managed to BUY the house like this (I think they thought we had built it on ourselves and are just stupid enough to try to get planning for the conservatory)

so, anyone have any idea where we may stand???

and how likely is it that we will have to pull our house apart to return it to what is should be???

or do we just apply for planning in reverse?? No-one seemed to know earlier on the phone as they just seemed stunned that we had bought it like it and had lived here for 12yrs without anyone noticing (and belive me, you can;t NOT notice).

am I that ignorable

yes it is isn;t it!!!!

a response is lovely tho, so thankyou

awww

i would get in touch with the council and maybe go and see a soliciter

your husband is lucky he is a bricklayer cause at least you'll know the rules and stuff

have you got any pictures of when you first brought your house with the conservatory on it for evidence?

Do you still have the paperwork re your purchase. Might help if the searches were wrong and did not uncover a problem at the time.
Not sure how as have no experience or professional knowledge . I just wanted to offer you a straw of hope to clutch at.
Veryand for you

Find out the solicitors stuff from the purchase

then take in the letters, copies of original searche, shout and suggest they sort out sharpish

Hi psychomum -

I worked in a planning office for a bit.

If your conservatory/lean to has been there for over 4 years, there's nothing the council can do about it. So don't worry about that.

I don't know why the council would be talking to you about convenants - convenants are legal documents regarding the land/property you own, but this is not within the remit of the planning department. It wouldn't have anything to do with whether they grant you planning permission for the conservatory or not.

Oh, unless the council actually have some interest themselves in the land/land adjoining, but I never heard of anything like that before.

So - you've put your application in? You just need to wait for the consultation period to end and then you just wait for the council to make up their mind. It's quite unusual for permission to be refused if it's basically a re-vamp of what's already there.

Hope this helped!

we have all the deeds and stuff from when we bought it, so we do have proof.

and if you google earth our house, you can see that it was all up 2yrs back, and the council man said that would stand in our favour.

but he had no clue as to what might happen if it goes against us.

sooo

ranat rant rant and

planning permission suff is crap
would it be cheaper to get an architect on the job?
we put in planning permission to build a house 15 months ago through an architect and it is still going through

surely you cant be held accountable for something that was there before you even bought it???

Sounds completely bizarre! Very unusual for several sets of solicitors to miss it during searches. I'd get onto to the whoever handled your sale, they should still have copies of the searches etc. If not, then the least they could do is give you some advice!

Good luck getting it sorted!

sorry just read jawjaws explaination. i was getting ahead of myself

i get all worked up about this stuff cause i know how horrible it is.

oh jawjaw, thankyou for that.

would it have anything to do with our house being an Ex-council property???

the very first occupants (the ones who did the extension without the planning) bought the house from the council in 1984 according to our deeds.

the extension went up (we think, but not sure, we have worked out the timing from the neighbours), in about 1989/90.

they sold in 1992.....

we then bought it in 1997.

with all intact at that time, as stated on deeds and the selling blurb (which we kept) from the estate agents.

also when we bought our 2nd house it was all ok, when we wnet to sell it, the buyers sloicitor noticed a line in our deeds on the front garden which should have been walk path, but it had been made into our garden when it was built....

so we had to pay £800 insurance to protect us from anyone claming that bit of land on my garden was theirs, not mine!!!

madness

ooh, so we may need money to sort this then???

argh, no, I want to spend the money on sparkly shiny extension stuff!!!

((if they let us that is))

from what jawjaw has said it sounds like you will be fine, worst case scenario is that they dont let you build they shiny new bit
if it has been up for 4 years then at least you will be able to keep it up, no arguments about that.

(although with the planning department who knows)

after years of various planning applications we have decided there must be some sort of bribes department. its not what you know it is who you know.

It may well have something to do with it being an ex-council property - I can't remember what the rules were regarding that situation (sorry, been a few years since I did that job!)

Can I ask what council it is?

If an extension went up without permission, and then the council found out about it within 4 years of it being erected, they have the right to take action (possibly leading to demolition, but highly unlikely unless it was completely unreasonable).

But it seems like it was there for longer than that, and has now been demolished? I don't think the council would waste their time pursuing you for that... it doesn't exist now, correct? So shouldn't have anything to do with your current application.

I think if it's a reasonable sized extension, it's unlikely to get refused. Sorry I can't be more help on the convenant/ex-council bit. I hope they're being helpful to you at the council, remember you're paying their wages!

Hey Psycho - sorry you are having a stressful time with planning. My understanding is that if the structure has been in place for a certain period of time then planning is no longer required - as already said.
Have just had my back been put up by planning re: a fence in our garden. All very futile and irritating. A neighbour complained because we took down a very dog-eared open trellis fence to the back of our garden which allowed us to see into their garden and house and vice versa. We replaced it with a lovely curved fence with some open trellis to the top - it wasn't cheap and looks lovely. 6 foot same as panels that had been there and offered more privacy to the both of us. However because said panel is on top of the retaining wall at the bottom of garden it was greater than 6ft (as was previous very old fence) therfore we had to take it all out and cut down by 4 inches!!!!!!
Also love the idea of a futility room psycho .
Best of luck i'm sure it will be fine.

no no no.....tis not demolished......I am sat in it right now!!

It contains our lounge and master bedroom, so I would not be best pleased if it had to come down, but from what you say, it won;t.

it is bournemouth council.

so, worst case scenario we cannot make our conservatory bigger, but we could replace what we currently have size for size then???

ilovecake.....I want my futility room most of all.

it was coined by someone on the larger families section......cannot remember who now, but we all loved the name and it has stuck!

do you have good neighbours?? if you did get turned down to re-do it, could you not just replace it anyway, or would someone tell the council of you??
very naughty thing to do,but...

Psycomum5, you have my sympathy.

However, I am loving the idea of a futility room.

liz, our neighbours are fab actually (now they are at least, since the horrid one moved away).

they are all stunned that we applied for planning, we have sinced discovered....we have been quite popular these last 2wks with everyone coming and asking what we are doing.

((seems that pretty orange signs are very rare down our road))

yes. to soothe you, the last house we bought was a Knocker - we knocked it down and built a new one. But the one we bought had been supposed to be knocked down 20 years before as a condition for getting planning permission to build a new house in its garden. The people who built the new house in the garden were smart, they didn't knock the old one down, they just left it there for 4 years until it was too late. Then they sold it to someone else, who sold it to us.

So when planning permission was applied for to knock it down and rebuild there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth at the planning office, BUT not only had it been there for 4 years without objection, but they had also been collecting council tax for 12 years. So no problem. (although that was just the start of the planning process...)

So your existing extension is safe. Replacing it like for like should also be safe, but the council may not let you extend it further. There is a basic 40% rule in lots of places - you can only extend a house by 40% over the size it was in 1953 (or something) so if your house is already 40% bigger then you may not be allowed to make it bigger still. But you can make it better and shinier and with enough power points and windows that close and so forth.