We've stopped our extension mid-build - nightmare neighbours

[JayGatsby]

Has anyone had any experience of this?

When we bought our house last year, the survey failed to pick up that the dilapidated glass-and-wood kitchen utility was in fact leaking and falling down. It had to be replaced as water dripped down the walls when it rained, there was no damp course and the timbers were completely rotten. And we couldn't open the back door because it was so swollen.

We found a builder, got architect plans drawn up, and got planning permission for a replacement utility made of brick and a pitched roof.

Which is when we discovered our adjoining neighbours were violently against the plans because it involved our flat roof becoming a pitched roof, which they feared would cast a shadow across a portion of their flat roof.

We spent hours and hours talking to them. We reduced the pitch to the most gentle physically possible (15%), offered to re-felt their roof at the same time etc etc. Eventually they agreed to sign a party wall agreement to let us build up their party wall.

Our build started three weeks ago but on Thursday when the roof rafters went up, our neighbour started taking photos and telling our builder it was going higher than she'd agreed. The apex is in fact one-and-a-half brick courses higher than the graphics on the architect drawings implied.

Today she sent messages saying we'd breached the party wall agreement and our agreement and she would be getting a party wall surveyor involved (with us picking up the cost). Eventually the builder downed tools and says he'll be back when the situation's resolved.

It's a nightmare. We've spoken to the planning dept and just spent another hour with her. We don't seem to have any legal protection. Our options appear to be:
a) pull it down and replace with a crappy flat roof
b) keep building and face months/years of defending ourselves against legal action, which seems v miserable and expensive.

No one can suggest any better solution to this. The builder looked at installing a low 6'2" door to lower the roof profile, but we have family members who are 6'2".

We're at our wits' end. I'm sure no one's managed to get this far . I can't believe our modest, tiny and unfurnished utility room/loo is causing so much grief.

You've really just got to carry on & get the job finished haven't you?

There really don't seem to be any other viable options. You can't afford to pull it down and start again (and why should you when you have planning permission) and surely just leaving it part finished will be far more unsightly than an extra 5cms of brick?

It sounds as though you've done what you can to appease your neighbour at the planning stage so you're hardly being unreasonable tossers.

If the planning department say the 5cm is fine, then carry on & get your room finished. You may be off the neighbour's Christmas card list this year though .

We had terrible problems with our lovely neighbours over planning and building, really, really bad. Once it was all done and dusted it's never been mentioned again and we get on well. Carry on I say. Change is difficult but what you are doing is reasonable.

She's in tears about the gable of a 15 degree pitch roof being 5cm higher than the drawings suggested? Because of the resulting shadow that will be cast onto her flat roof? Seriously?

Whatever action is needed it's nothing to do with the building work.

hereandtherex OK if you are going the build up against any brick wall then you have to tie new courses of brickwork into the existing and then you will finish at around a 75 mm interval as they are the course heights.

So how are you going to vary it over a lesser amount?.

If moss really was such a problem on flat roofs in the shade, then surely no north facing extensions would have been built, ever.

I've lived in a succession of houses with flat bits of roof (most rented, this one not) and it's always hot periods of summer when new cracks seem to appear in the less sound ones.

5cm over plan is a lot.

No it's not, what absolute nonsense. I'm a planning enforcement officer. If you showed me something about 2m high, I'd have to get my magnifying glass measuring tape out to see it was 5cm either side of that. You can barely see the difference; it would be of no consequence to anyone. There is no chance I would pursue a 5cm difference from the plan (unless it related to a listed building or something), 5cm out is called "in accordance with the plans".

We had an extension done a few years ago for which we had to get planning permission. Once it was almost finished, one of my neighbours phoned up the planning department to complain that it had been built too high. A planning officer came around with his tape measure and said to me that according to his measurements, it was about 6cm higher than had been agreed. I was absolutely beside myself for the next week that we would have to pull it down. About a week later, I spoke to the planning officer in charge, and it was clear that he didn't consider this to be a major infringement, and that he had no intention of taking it further.

Party wall agreements are much more about damage that you cause to property (eg by digging foundations), and are superseded by planning dept decisions - they are not about whether walls are too high etc.

I really resented out neighbours for the hassle they caused us. We bent over backwards to incorporate their needs into our plans, and they made us feel like the aggressors for wanting our house to be nicer. In the end though, all their complaints and threats got them no-where as the planning people are actually there to allow what is reasonable.

Op I can sympathise completely , we had nightmare neighbours like yours when we extended about 10yrs ago.

Maybe they have moved next to you?

Tell your neighbour to stop beings so fucking ridiculous and get on a build your extension.