Planning dept rejecting extension plans - WWYD?

[BirdyBedtime]

We live in a fairly boring late 60's detached house. It has 3 bedrooms but we'd like to add a fourth and a porch. We've had drawings done but not even a week since they were submitted the planning officer has emailed our archtiect asking him to change the design of the proposed roof as the plans are 'unlikely to be approved in their current form'. The email is long winded and full of terms like 'harmfully intrusive', architectural fabric, etc but what it boils down to is that because no-one has extended in the way we want to it would look different. The issue with the roof is that they want to continue the existing roofline which would mean a coved ceiling whereas we want a peaked pitched roof for that part. Loads of houses in the street have extended on the ground floor with very different designs, and one on 2 floors with the roof shape they want but it looks awful.

Our house is the first in the street and on the road on the other side the houses are a completely different design, as are those directly opposite - so lots of different designs within 20m. Althoughthe roof shape would be different we incorporated as many features as we could that are similar eg wooden cladding below the window, same roof tiles, same brick etc.

Our neighbours like the design and none intended to object, but it seems like the planning officer has already decided it's not going to be passed. Has anyone had experience of appealing a planning decision? We are in Scotland. I wonder whether having the neighbours sign a letter of support would help. I can't find any info on the appeals process on the council website although I can on other council sites.

I don't know about the Scottish system or the appeals process (but not much use really) but we were recently in a similar position (i.e. planning officer told architect that plans would be rejected - it was also to do with a requirement to carry on the existing roof line but don't really understand the specifics). Anyway, the architect and the planning officer had numerous telephone calls, there were about 4 different versions of the plans trying to reach a compromise. In the end, the council got probably 80% of their wishes, we got 20% - we made a couple of minor amendments but the roof issue was a deal breaker - the council wouldn't let us have the plans we wanted however much our architect pressed as it was simply against the policy. We were in a similar position in that the neighbours all preferred our plans rather than what the council wanted us to have, but it makes no difference.

Your architect could go and have a discussion about your proposals and put forward a case for it but I would say experience tells me that this would be unlikely to elicit much change with the planning officer. I presume They will be citing the change in character for the property and that this will reflect on the area as a whole. This is their job, to assess the impact of your individual dwelling on the character of the area as a whole and any precedent this might set for future development. Usually councils have fairly set guidelines for what they will allow for extensions and outside if these it is more difficult to get acceptance without making a very strong case for why yours should be an exception (outstanding design, particular difficult constraints, eco benefit)
Your personal preference for a particular internal detail is unlikely to be enough on it's own to sway the decision. I don't know your architect or extension but if it's a fairly standard extension job it might not be worth the time or money to fight for this.

Thanks. That's kind of what I thought people might say. I just think it's frustrating and can't quite understand the opposition to something being a bit different - why the insistence on uniformity pretty much? It doesn't. make a huge difference internally, just the coved ceiling which does impact on the available space a bit, but the roof they want just looks plain ugly and an obvious add-on whereas what we want actually looks like something someone might want to build.

We met with the planning officer umpteen times regarding our roof, they basically said that it needs to be subservient to the old roof and their big thing was that you needed to be able to tell the new bit "If it's new, make it look new".