What can you do with a detached garage?

[ITriedAnother]

We're in the process of buying a house that has a single detached garage. The survey showed it's in a bit of a state and will need a new roof, door and window and the walls will also need some work. We don't need a garage so it seems a shame to spend money making the garage better. Is there anything stopping us from rebuilding it as a garden room? Would we need planning permission? Thank you.

You can convert it to a garden room, as long as it's only been used as a domestic garage and ancillary to the house then a garage conversion is considered permitted development.

If you knock it down, you could replace with a new garden room provided that new building falls within the restrictions of permitted development for an outbuilding.

our neighbours have done this.
garage in the back of the garden. then they built an extension, so the driveway was buit over.
They incorporated the driveway into the garden.

Then last summer they knocked down the garage and then rebuilt it as a wooden summer house. Looks very nice.

Personally I would have a home office, but then it would need to be well insulated.

or, depending on where it is, you could build a link to the house and create and extra room, by making it into an extension. (you'd need planning permission)
The link part could be a utility room too.
Fab extra space!

Sell it?

Great, thank you. Really helpful.

@Aridane do you mean sell the garage? It's in the garden so not really an option.

Apologies- didn’t realise it was right in the garden. I had assumed it was to the side and there could be sold if you had no use for it (subject to it not tanking the sale value of the property

We bought our house with a single garage. We got pp to build a double garage with a car port. It has a loft over it which is now a self contained flat. Garages sell properties so I wouldn’t get rid of it. Storage is a wonderful bonus in a big garage - although we are multiple car owners! We have a covenant on it that means it cannot be sold separately from the house but the flat is great for guests, au pair or even as an office. Think big!

@BubblesBuddy That sounds amazing. Do you mind sharing how much it cost? I had assumed that we wouldn't get planning permission to build on top of the garage but, if we could, that would be ideal.