Neighbours have raised garden - can we do anything?

[Lettherebelight]

We live in a terraced house & developers have bought next door & added a big extension. To save on removing the earth & rubble they've raised the height of the garden by about 3 foot. This sucks because now anyone in their garden will be above the wall, looking in on us, and, even worse, I think our wall will collapse with the weight pressing on it. Can we do anything?

Hopefully someone with more knowledge will be along soon

But were you even consulted? I'm guessing no?

Developments are so out of hand now.

Nope, they even tried to deny it at first (it's incredibly obvious because it's a terrace!)

Go on your Council website and report unauthorised groundwork’s to planning enforcement. Someone will take a look and if they need permission they will have to make an application, which you will be consulted on

Also get them to check if they had permission for that size extension too if it’s a big one!

Agree, try council

There's a lot of this going on - developers just doing as they please to a site without permission

Round here, quite a few have been given permission retrospectively but in this case there's a huge impact on you, which should have been safety checked etc etc

I would go straight to Building control at your local council. They are usually pretty good and quick with these things. If they don’t have permission and it is required then they will have to change it. If they don’t need permission but have done the work badly (affecting your wall) then they will make them correct it. I would control them soon so that your grievance is with the developers rather than actual neighbours living in the property.

Oh that's really helpful, thanks! And yes, if there us any way to fix this, I really want to do it before the house is sold. Last thing anyone needs is immediate problems with new neighbours

Raising ground l is a planning issue, not specifically building control, so report to planning and say you're over looked now

Anything that changes their outlook and raises concern of overlooking requires planning permission. Even with a permitted development, they are required to get a thorough neighbour consultation prior to the build of it is over 3m.

It could be a building control issue if the raised ground level means that the garden wall has effectively become a retaining wall for the new raised garden level. Retaining walls have to be built to certain standards which a normal garden wall probably will not. I'd report to both planning and building control asap.

Also did they serve party wall notices before beginning work?

Yes, they did serve the party wall notice because of the loft conversion - stupidly it hadn't occurred to me the garden wall might be affected.

let us know how you get on OP.