Beyond our rotting garden fence is a 6ft grass verge and then a v quiet cul de sac road. It’s on the outside of the bend too (which in point as it doesn’t hinder driver visibility). Much of the verge is owned by us and reflected so in our property deeds. We mow the grass periodically and the council doesn’t touch it. Some neighbours have the same but filled theirs in with shrubbery, or 10ft conifers.
We want to replace the old fence with a new stronger one slightly further out, adopting our portion of the verge into our teeny garden. Not the entire verge will be lost - only about half of the depth.
The local planning department has been typically unhelpful saying ‘it is likely you would need a change of use application from amenity to residential… if you proceed without, it would be at your own risk’. The original online application links they sent made no mention of changing use of ‘amenity’ land and were unusable so they’ve given us a generic paper planning application form instead. There’s no reference to this kind of land on the form either, and the national Use Classes as updated 1/9/2020 has no category for amenity nor one which a random grass strip might fall into. The standard guidance on the planning portal also says not all changes in use require permission. So we’re reluctant to spend £400+ fee (maybe need drawings prepared at extra cost too) and wait months on an application we possibly don’t need. The fee varies on the type of change so that in itself is unclear.
It is our land and nobody else would have any purpose to object. You can bet some busybody neighbour would look into whether we had permission though and alert the council. It’s not even used for parking and there are no services running underneath. For scale it’s around 4ft x 30ft. Happy to pay if we absolutely do need to as the extra space would be so useful to us.
Anyone been through this or can offer guidance please? What class of land even is this?