Planning question

[didireallysaythat]

Would I be right in thinking there's no point in going to an appeal if the officer says there's no change to the plans that would be acceptable? Parish, neighbours etc have no concerns just the officer doesn't like the view from the street

What’s wrong with the front elevation? Couldn’t you come up with sth more acceptable?

@JoJoSM2 it would appear not - planning wants to retain a gap where we want a room. Any filling in of the gap is unacceptable, making it blend in, stand out, setting it back, etc won't pass. I'm assuming it means there's absolutely no point in pursuing this further and we should just move on.

If the only material planning consideration is street scene and there weren’t any issues with a NDP/local plan/nppf then this is subjective.

I would appeal.

And if you can get the parish or the local councillor to support your appeal then this improves your odds too

I would appeal, definitely. As cujo says,it sounds like a matter of opinion,not actual planning regulations that are the issue in your case.
Definitely get your local councillor involved. We had our planning permission refused for completely insane reasons and it was only getting our local councillor involved that helped get it passed. Even she had to contact the planning department twice though. Has it actually been refused yet? If not,and comments are still open,get as many local people to support you as you can. Even if they object,it doesn't really matter. The reason I say this is because if you get a lot of comments,your case is no longer straight forward and can be heard by a planning committee rather than be at the whim of a single planning officer. We did this for our outline pp after the council said they were going to refuse,and it was passed by the planning committee unanimously. I know 4 other people who did the same and they all got their plans passed by the committee,after the individual planner had said he was going to refuse them.

Thank you for your comments.

I read somewhere that if the parish said it's fine but planning says no, it should go to the next planning meeting anyway, in which case getting our ward councillor involved would be worth it.

It's a bit of an anti climax as we believed we needed the space quickly and we have gone with the smallest volume, adjusted the roof and exterior to mean that it doesn't overly impact the neighbouring property, just to get us another room for WFH. By the time we've gone through an appeal process we are another three months on, builders won't be as keen/fast to construct and we probably wouldn't have the space until next year. But I appreciate that's not the planning offices problem.

But maybe we should play the long game. Does going to appeal cost anything, other than my angst and the hours lost trying to drum up approval? And are there a set of rules on what does and does not dictate planning? As PP have said, it's quite a subjective point and if our neighbour's aren't bothered that should count for something?

They don't like it if one house in a row of similar properties changes - it spoils the look of the street. So if you're in a row of houses, all of which have that gap not filled in, it's reasonable to refuse.

Have a look on the Planning Portal for a list of things they do and don't take into account. For example, if your neighbours complain that you doing building work would be noisy - hard luck! For planning purposes, they're only interested in how the finished product would affect the neighbourhood, not the building process.

There's not two identical houses in a row here - none of them, including ours is particularly striking to look at - they are mostly 1950 detached two stories or bungalows. No unifying theme to be disrupted.