Neighbour planning issue

[Silkencat]

We live on a road of semi detached 30s houses in a suburban town. Neighbours - who we are very friendly with - are planning major building work, including basement extension. It will be disruptive, particularly as I work at home… but we can’t complain, particularly as we did similar work a decade ago (before new neighbours moved in!)

Neighbours are lovely but do have a bit a tendency to be pushy to get exactly what they want at all costs, and also suffer a bit from ‘expert on everything’ syndrome 🤪

We knew they were planning for work to start at some point next summer, and had vaguely chatted about it. 2 days ago we get a sort of ‘gosh sorry, we simply didn’t realise our architect’s drawings were submitted for planning but they are on the council planning website now’ email from them.

They were submitted two weeks ago, and on the docs it says we have been ‘consulted’ on these plans - this simply isn’t true. When we did our work we were careful to go to all relevant neighbours with architectural plans BEFORE submission, so if there was anything they had issues with, we would amend accordingly.

I don’t know if this is simply bad manners, or if they’ve actually breached something here by claiming we’ve been consulted. Thoughts?

Are you sure the "neighbours consulted" bit isn't just the council confirming it's sent you a letter that you've just received?

I’d be annoyed by this but it won’t hold any weight with the council as that is why they are sending out a consultation letter. Otherwise every other resident would be doing the same thing hoping to get plans through planning that were impacting their neighbours negatively. You could send in something noting you weren’t consulted if you wanted.

You could just say to your neighbours to say you were surprised to see you had been consulted when they’d obviously ‘forgotten’ to go through the plans with you but just as well it is all on the website as you can look at it in your own time. Didn’t they realise that all plans submitted are there for public viewing?

The other thing I would say is even when neighbours are consulted, things are often changed during the build, added or whatever. This has happened to several friends of mine. So a consultation prior isn’t a watertight guarantee in any case.

So that is all just poor manners and disappointing, but then seeing ‘neighbours consulted - silkencat’ on the council website got my back up more, but I don’t know the exact process for this - ie are they claiming we HAD been consulted (not true), or is this simply underlining that we WILL be consulted/alerted by the council (true)?

You said that was on the plans earlier.
If it's just part of the general website but, it will be the Council's list of who has been consulted as part of the determination process. Has it got an expiry date next to it?

Had the exact same issue with our neighbours. We had been very friendly and helpful when they viewed and purchased the property and fully expected them to build an extension.
They did not share plans with us but said it was 'basically what they had talked about'. It was not. It was twice the size and even had its foundations on our land. That was rejected by planning but a modified version approved.
Fast forward 2 years and after 18 months of building hell, party wall (dis)agreements, horrendous entitled builders - we no longer talk.
It is common decency and makes life so much easier if you simply talk to people....

God.. WTF is wrong with people!!!! They absolutely should have spoken with you out of courtesy. We only found out about our neighbours plans when we started getting letters from random party wall people who had seen the application for a 6m colossal extension on the council website. A lot of heartache could have been avoided if our neighbours had just come round and spoken to us in the first place. I genuinely believe we could have come to an agreement - even though they are a bit psycho 👀 The owner refused to speak with us, sent her builder round instead to try and convince us... (nice try!!) we objected and won 🤷🏻‍♀️ Cue lots of passive aggressive behaviour from them. It all ended in amended plans and a weird looking extension. We are completely NC with them ever since.... no skin off our nose, the rest of our neighbours our lovely. We just have nothing to do with next door.

@Gooseysgirl same with our neighbours. The first we knew about their loft conversion was when my DH heard a strange noise, opened the attic door, dodged a piece of falling masonry and discovered a huge hole in the party wall. We had to threaten them with an injunction to get it stopped and sorted properly and they behaved like we were being unreasonable because we didn't like the noise. Turns out there were three holes and they lifted our roof tiles to install part of a skylight, which also had to be undone.

They were genuinely baffled as to why we objected to all this. Absolute arseholes.

I would tell neighbours planning is being submitted and the rough idea but would not show plans and would not want to give the impression they were up for debate. Ultimately whether they are appropriate is up to the objective planning standards and the department. I wouldn't want a situation where neighbours expected to be able to design to their ideas or amend plans. It sounds like you were consulted a bit. Did you show neighbours plans for their comment?

I would qualify this to say obviously party walls need consultation which is why there is statory proceedure for that

Similar to others this happened to us too. And it was the precursor to further trouble such that we no longer speak. But it made no difference to the planning process - we objected and the only people surprised were the neighbours so I don’t know if they thought ticking the neighbours consulted box removed our ability to object. It didn’t.

Well that is pointless because your neighbours will get to see the plans anyway. Showing them before submitting might well ease the way to accepting some things they might object to later on if you hadn’t bothered. It works both ways. Neighbours don’t get to ‘design’ your building but amending some minor detail might make things easier down the line and avoid any animosity. Other people’s extensions and the like can affect house prices, privacy, access and so on so they do have a right to ask for amendments. Rather do it over a glass of wine than in a planning meeting myself.

Have you got a problem with their plans? If yes, go to council. If no, don’t worry about it.

Just throwing out that we were in your neighbours shoes recently - architect jumped the gun in submitting planning application before we had the chance to show neighbours the final plan. We weren’t doing anything that affected them directly and had spoken about it with them conceptually during the design phase, so no drama (I don’t think), but in the spirit of neighbourly relations would have preferred a different sequence of events. Just to say it might be exactly as they have presented and a simple miscommunication rather than a nefarious plot. You still have the opportunity to review and comment (either formally or informally with your neighbours) prior to planning review.

@cezannesapple it worked out well for us and in 2 applications we haven't had an objection let alone a committee meeting. Obviously they will see the plans which aren't being hidden but by the time they have been drawn up and fully considered I wouldn't be changing them as they already meet planning criteria as well as meeting our needs. I think its more difficult to ask for opinions at that stage as if they for example ask for windows to be taken out we are going to say no which would be worse imo. But like I said, very well drawn up and considered plans and certainly no party wall and not a single objection on 2 rounds of planning in a contentious location. I think people get their subjective interests a bit confused with planning policy and if asked are likely to request more than they are entitled to.

If you go into this process looking for slights, it is going to be stressful. Focus on what actually matters. Do you have objections to the proposal? When work starts, don’t get upset if the neighbors don’t bring you treats to apologize for a noisy day. Simply ask yourself if they are reasonably complying with local rules and regulations.

Quite possibly. You sound as if you drew up your plans well but you'd be amazed with what people try to do.

@cezannesapple that is most likely true. We do try to be reasonable....

Unless the neighbours have an objection related to a material planning consideration, most people won't make changes to their plans before submitting their application. They would rather work with their case officer to make changes based on any objections received.

I’m with Country on this one.

We took plans round to all key neighbours to show them and discuss etc. One set objected following due process - we are on good terms now, no hard feelings.

The other took it as licence to ask us to postpone our build by 6 months (we hadn’t even gotten planning at that point, let alone gone out to tender or discussed lead times for the builder) and telling (not asking) us that we would have to agree to periods over lunch when the builders wouldn’t work. What she was asking would have cost us an additional £50,000+ and taken 3 months longer… Having failed to emotionally blackmail us into doing this they then tried to sneak a clause to this effect into the Party Wall Agreement. Thankfully we’d opted for separate surveyors.

She then separately queried via email the impact our build would have on their light (none, as the extension is lower than and blocked by the bulk of our house) and when our answer wasn’t satisfactory made a formal objection - even the planner disregarded this one. She has since had the council remove her objection for some unknown reason (we ultimately got planning for what we wanted).

In our situation we really regretted showing the second neighbour our plans at all to be honest. Despite our best efforts they became increasingly difficult from there on out - it encouraged a sense of entitlement.

Thanks everyone! I am still not sure about the exact process re council - but seems a little odd to have a document listing us/other neighbours/town historical society etc as ‘consulted’ a fortnight ago, when the consultation period is only a month long, and we only got the letter from the council yesterday.

In terms of plans to neighbours - yes we did this and were happy to. We wanted to seem open and agreeable to any possible issues from the outset, it felt like the very least we could do when about to start subjecting them to months of noise. We actually made a few slight amendments at their request and the whole thing was pretty seamless - we remained on good terms with them throughout. Warned them in advance of any really disruptive noise, paid for window cleaners a few times, took wine over etc.

As others have already said, I'm fairly certain "consulted", means you will be consulted by the council (as you have now been), not that you were consulted by the neighbours.

In our area, you can save a search so you get an email if permission is applied for in a particular postcode.

Yes, the lamppost notice is all the consultation required, there’s no obligation to have face to face chats with anybody.

The Council website showing you as being consulted does not refer to your neighbours showing you the plans. It highlights that the Council have notified you by letter.

You normally have 21 days from the date of a letter or a site notice in which to write to the Council. Although in reality, you have until just before the date a decision is made, which is the determination deadline.

Planning officers will be interested in general material reasons why you are objecting. Have a look at the planning portal for examples.

Planning Portal

Also have a look at whether or not the Council has a design guide or code, and see whether the proposal would be contrary to this or not.

@Pogonogo - thanks so much, that is really useful to know and I’m also pleased they weren’t quite as sneaky as I thought! 😂

Any ideas re noise? I know that standard hours but a few things I’m nervous about - 1) I work at home and 2) my 18 year old twins are doing their a-levels. Can I request certain reductions in noise hours so there are times we know the house will be quiet?

You can certainly ask Silken but I wouldn’t try and put this into a legally binding agreement, as ours did.

You should be aware that there are times when they simply can’t adhere to these quiet periods though. For example, they can’t stop in the middle of installing an RSJ as it’s neither practical nor safe. Things can also change at very short notice.

In reality the noise will be during working hours (check the council website for these) and (teacher here) the twins could use the study hall at school during these periods if needed. Your best bet is to try keep lines of communication between yourselves open, so that they are willing to tell you (as far as they know) as noisy works will be done day to day.