Extension question

[AKM89]

Hi everyone - I was wondering if anyone might be able to advise on a question I have. I’m going to view a house tomorrow (I’ll be scant in detail about the area because it would be easy to find given the state of the market at the minute). It’s a beautiful Victorian house but the main issue is that the current owners have put in an extension that is not at all to our taste (very long and narrow) as well as turning the ground floor into almost entirely open plan. We could make it work for a few years but if we wanted to stay there long term we’d want to make some changes I thinkS Does anyone have any knowledge / experience of whether permitted development rights would allow you to demolish and rebuild an extension (subject to all other criteria being met) and how difficult it is to rebuild internal walls? Thanks in advance!

Permitted development varies according to area, we are conservation area and need permission for everything. look at local planning site. But if you are not doing anything substantiallly different shouldn’t be an issue.

it might be worth looking at the planning application for what they did in case there was a reason for the awkward extension.

internal wall rebuild very easy.

@BadAtMaths2 thanks for your reply. The property isn’t in a conservation area and the current extension was carried out under permitted development rights. I haven’t seen anything on the prior approval documents that indicates why the extension was carried out in that way - basically rather than doing a regular side return extension they have left the side return and put in a very narrow long extension that goes quite far into the garden. I’ll ask the agents whether they have any more information.

May be wrong but is it a case that doing a "normal" side return (where you go very close to the boundary) always needs planning permission - when permitted development rights changed a few years ago (to make them more generous / you could extend further from the house) maybe they didn't want the hassle of going through formal planning application - or an element of it wouldn't have been accepted - so they just went down the PD route?

@Africa2go that’s a good point - I had thought side extensions fell within permitted development but as you say may be a boundary point, will recheck the rules. Sounds like it’s definitely worth trying to get to the bottom of it before we make an offer (/ if we make an offer). I agree there must be some reason they did it the way they did.