Anyone legal who can help on a problem with local planners (not whether an extension is legal or not)?

[JillyJameson]

Can anyone advise, I will try and be brief but it is a planning thing so inevitably not brief! We are in disagreement with our local planning department.

• consulted planning before we bought our house about the possibility of putting a small extensions on which would fill in an L shape at the back of our house. Whilst they will never make a definite decision they pulled up all the planning history and sent it to me and thought it would be acceptable under permitted development

• We buy the house

• We employ an architect to draw up plans (part of these involve removing a chimney on the other side of the house which can't be done under permitted development and require planning permission)

• Go for planning permission to cover the extension and the chimney removal. Planning officer visits sites and advises us that he has consulted his manager who said we won't get planning permission because of the 50% increase rule and there is already an extension on the house.

• Planning officer advises we go for permitted development on the extension (and planning for the chimney - another set of planning fees are paid)

• Planning officer comes onto site and says our plans won't meet permitted development as the roof (from original drawings) is approx 30cm too high

• Architect re-draws roof to match requirements by planning and amends permitted development application

• All quiet, eventually I email the planning officer who confirms 'nothing to worry about' I've put it all forward for approval, it just needs signing off

• We get architect to draw up building regulation drawings to submit to builders for quotes

• Permission is due in 10 days

• Phone call this morning, 'sorry, I made a mistake, there is no scope for extension of your house under permitted development'. The planning officer's manager has checked and realised it falls foul of width restriction.

We have spent £3500 on architect (and he has yet to invoice for building regs drawings which will be several thousand more), approx £400 on planning fees. For nothing. All done on the advice of the planning officer gave us. Where do we go from here? We are fuming and really upset. Our builder was due to start in two weeks.

His manager is right on the regulations - he sent me the piece of legislation - so I'm not sure there is any scope for appeal (we were going to remove an old conservatory the footprint of which is approx half the footprint of the extension so that might help). I'm just so angry at all the money we have wasted though. We wouldn't have had even the first set of drawings done if he had advised us properly in the first place, or applied for the permissions and we definitely wouldn't have instructed the architect to draw up building reg drawings if we thought there was any problem ahead. We did everything you are supposed to do before going ahead with an extension, we consulted them before we even bought the damn house!

Do we have any rights? Can we sue the planning dept? (I don't come to that lightly but we're talking probably £5/6000 lost here). They didn't check permitted development legislation properly, they advised us incorrectly (even after two site visits) and as a direct result we have lost money. I have probably 40 or so emails which I exchanged with the planning officer.
I've name changed and kept this completely anonymous just in case.

Anyone got any thoughts? Oh and thanks for reading such a long post!

Whether you have paid or not is a bit of a misnomer.

You don't pay for the NHS (well you do but in the same way you pay for the Council).

If a body puts themselves out there to offer a service, you take them up on that service and their negligent advice causes you loss - you are able to seek to recover that loss through the Courts.

The only thing I would worry about here is the Council won't have failed to put a thousand disclaimers in place to protect their asses in cases such as these. We here are going from your facts without having seen the terms and conditions of the advice.

And it's clear you won't be allowed to do the work you want. It's strictly statutory - they won't and can't capitulate just because someone fucked up.

Go after them for the loss you've suffered but don't spend a fortune - get advice from a solicitor first before you make the application. She'll be able to tell you whether or not it's worth taking things forward.

It's the principle of estoppel. It's well established in law. Your advice from the LPA should not be taken as binding until you have a decision notice. That's why they (and we) advise a CLD.

Planning officers are human. They have varying levels of experience and are variably good at their jobs. Sometimes they screw up. Keeping the level of screw ups to the absolute minimum is part of running a good planning service but inevitably things will go wrong sometimes.

It could be worse, you could have built it!

Please don't chuck good money after bad at at solicitors. Your recourse is through the Local Government Ombudsman, not litigation. You need to go through the Council's formal complaints procedure first - write to their Head of Planning / Development Management whatever they are called.

I'm with Magda (also solicitor). Having been on the receiving end of bed advice from the Council, all advice (in my experience) is caveated on the basis that it is general advice and should not be relied upon. Even at the site visit stage, the planning officer won't have seen the plans / drawings that were submitted and won't know what objections (if any) will be made by neighbours. Certainty here, the planning officers that come out to site are only part of the planning team and dare I say it relatively junior, and then the planning committee (presumably with more experienced / senior planners) review the applications. That's where ours fell down - even though the planning officer who came out said there was no problem.

I think you have jumped the gun in getting drawings prepared for builders etc without planning permission and surprised that you have spent as much as you have on drawings.

Thanks everyone, really useful advice.

Agree we jumped the gun on the building regs drawings. Actually the extension is just a part of some major remodelling and renovation internally so we will be able to use part of those still.

I think £3500 for an architect's drawings and submitting of plans is not a ridiculous amount (having read many, many threads on here about architect's fees before committing to one!)

We did go for a CLD (but obvs have had to spend money on plans to do that) - we should have been advised that even going for a CLD was a waste of time so that we shouldn't have had plans drawn.

Just for clarification, by the time the site visit happened the planning bloke had seen the planning history and our application for an extension. He came to site to tell us to withdraw the planning application and to re-apply for permitted development.

Thanks for clarifyjng that a planner cocking up doesn't qualify us to get the extension we want - it's a shame it doesn't!

I really appreciate all the replies - even if I don't like what you are saying

I certainly won't EVER trust advice given by planners again and will be advising my friends and family similarly.

Better not trust me then . But it is good advice to not spend any money or do anything you can't come back from until you have a decision notice. In fact until you have had a decision notice for 6 weeks, which is when the period for judicial review expires.

Seriously though, you now have the ear of someone more senior. Find out what is permitted development and whether that suits you at all.

We had this. They advised us, in writing, what we needed to do to get planning permission. We did it. They turned us down. We appealed and won.

Sorry Magda!
So what's the planners views on exchanging like for like. So we have no scope for planning permission and permitted development would get us nothing worth spending the money on (maybe 3 ft extra on the back).
If we have a manky conservatory to remove, would they be inclined to let us replace it with something of the same size or smaller? This is something the senior planner suggested to us might be a possibility (and to put this replacement in the location of our proposed extension) after this debacle.

Don't worry, I have a thick skin - part of my job is to respond to complaints like these

Green Belt policy is all about maintaining openness. When it comes to house extensions, they mustn't be a disproportionate addition to the original property. Council's usually have a guideline of somewhere around a 30% increase in volume. You only get one lot of 30%, it is not 30% each time.

So if you are replacing like for like there is no additional volume (provided demolition and rebuild are one operation) and no additional impact on openness. So it should be OK.

I must caveat this (of course...) by saying this is based on Green Belt policy generally and without the benefit of seeing your plans / house / knowing what Council it is, I can't be in any way certain. But it is certainly an avenue worth exploring with the senior officer.

Apologies as haven't read all responses, but I'm a planning lawyer. In general any pre app advice you get from the planning dept is subject to change upon proper application. Annoying, yes. To be honest your architects job is to draw up plans which comply with the PD limits so if anything I'd be going for him. Some are better than others at this side of the role. Ombudsman is probably your only chance of airing your grievance but sorry to say o don't think there will be much recourse for you other than convincing architect to limit his charges. Sorry you've had this happen, it's very frustrating. For anyone trying to avoid in future, you would be wise to apply fir a certificate of lawfulness confirming the extent of PD rights- vendor could do this before completing the conveyancing.

Thanks Elsiebobo. Applying to find out the extent of PD rights before buying is great. Wish I'd known that last year