I have my bungalow up for sale.
Every viewer we have had has loved it but as it is on a road with huge 3 storey houses and it has a good sized plot similar to the other houses
Every viewer has wanted to knock it down and build a big house on the plot.
The problem is about 15 years ago I tried to do what other potential buyers want to do and that was to knock it down and rebuild.
The problem was first finding an architect who would actually deal with the local planning department. Once they knew the planning department the architects refused to touch it.
Eventually found an architect out of the area.
I would put in plans of what I thought was a sensible house.
The planning officer would say to change certain things. I would tell my architect what needed changing. The revised plans would be submitted then there would be something else that needed changing etc etc then they would say it needed to change again and what they described was the first plans I showed them. Then the whole thing would start again.
This went on for about 2 year before I gave up. It was like dealing with a group of people who were pathological liars and you couldn’t trust what they said.
No one would believe me when I told them what they did or said.
My architect tried to deal with them at one point to no avail and told me to give up and refused to deal with them again.
Soon after I had given up they met their match with another person who had tried and succeeded on appeal to get planning. I won’t go into details but it culminated in virtually all of the planning department being dismissed.
We did go ahead and put in for planning at one point (unfortunately I couldn’t go to the meeting otherwise I would have spotted the errors and pulled it out of the meeting on the night)
The planning officer we were dealing despite having all the figures and room sizes put down her own version for heights of rooms so it looked like the height of the house would look like a tower block.
I.e ceiling height for the ground floor was 2.4m. Ceiling height that was put before committee was 24m. Then it was drawn so it looked like the house spread up to the boundary on either side.
It was a complete mess.
Don’t get me started on the cubic footage. Even basic maths didn’t add up. Eg living room was put down as eg 24m height x 6 metres width x 10m length=1,159,997 cubic metres
The problem I am having is their refusal is on my planning history and because of this the people who want to buy the place are seeing this and don’t want to proceed.
They don’t see the ridiculous rehashed plans and the made up figures that didn’t add up which led to the refusal.
A development has since gone up down the road on what was green belt land and other people have extended to the side and out the back and our other ndn has had a massive side and back extension so I am thinking that if someone came along now with a hopefully more sensible planning dept they would get their plans through.
Otherwise how do I get someone who actually wants to live in the place as a bungalow without them looking at it and going down the development potential route
Or someone to look at the history of the planning department and realise that the refusal was not because they objected to any house being built on the plot but because of the fictitious height and spread of the plans.
Unfortunately because of new practices you can’t talk to the planning department anymore