I do not understand why I cannot raise the roof ?

[mamatomany]

We live in a semi which is only detached at the front of the property, from the sides and back ie where I would want a loft conversation it is not attached at all to the neighbours house so why I can I not raise it 6" so I can stand up in my loft conversion rather than lowering my ceilings which I think will look shit ?
Am not happy :(

"The precedent has been set" - unfortunately this isn't necessarily the case. It depends when the conversions were done, and how.

Huge excrescences of dormers were popped on just about anything from Victorian terraces to 50s bungalows in the 1970s and 80s, in some cases without any permission at all, but planners have cracked down now and just because someone else has done it, it's not an absolute indication that you will be permitted.

Recent ones are a probably good guide though.

A friend managed to raise her roof by (I think) about 4 inches, but they were on a hill of terraced houses, and the way they did it was simply to come out of line with the house on the left, and build up to the level of the house on the right - if you see what I mean. It didn't alter the fundamental look of the row at all.

The whole build (including finishing) cost over £50,000 though, which may give an indication of the costs involved.

Hi, we had a loft conversion with a low height in the loft. A few companies would not even ome over to quote due to loft height. We went down the route of hiring a guy to draw up plans then going out to builders and getting quotes. For a similar prie of going through a one size fits all ompany we got a very bespoke loft, poket sliding doors to be more space efficient, a huge patio door as a window to take advantage of the park behind our house and a glass juliette balcony, and solar tubes to bring in extra light to the hallway.

Anyway, back to ceiling height. The guy who drew the plans was really clever, we did not lower the ceiling below, we just had the steel beam boxed in to the room below. It worked with our house layout because the staircase runs through the middle of a 2 up 2 down terrace. The beam is behind your head when you enter the front bedroom so you don't even notice it too much. The guy who drew the plans is from loftconversionplans.com All he is does is draw loft conversion plans,he is not a trained architect but seeing as loft conversions plans is all he does he is good at it. If you have lots of ideas and know what you want I would recommend him, they will also apply to the council for permission. The only thing is the plans are not in great detail for a builder to work from but we had my FIL draw up detailed drawing for he staircase and one or 2 other features so we got exactly what we wanted. If you go down the route of getting drawing etc done up seperately you need to be prepared to take more responsibility for the overall job because a builder will blame the drawings or anything else but himself if things go wrong. We got a much better finish doing it this way though.