Proposed Permitted Development increase in single storey rear extensions - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

You have got to admire well rounded, strongly evidence based, fully considered well thought out and may I say consistent approach to planning reform which cannot fail to achieve a balance between protecting the environment while promoting sustainable growth reducing the deficit and providing long term employment of this government. How can this fail to unlock all those extensions that people have been dying to submit if it wasn’t for this pesky planners, the eight week delay and the failure of so many authorities to only achieve a 80% turnaround time. Just think of the flood of people waiting to submit their certificates of lawful development so they can sleep soundly knowing they have confirmation there extension did not need planning permission so there will be no delay when they sell their house in the coming property boom from all the new housing .

We can thank the middle class NIMBYs and the Daily Telegraphs's anti-NPPF campaign for this. They forced a watered down version of the NPPF to be released. The planning system also has had its part to play - in reality it's a slow, expensive, painful process to produce a planning application and get it accepted. To the LPA staff it's their full time job and they get paid whatever happens. To the applicant it's an important part of their life and they can often feel let down - and looked down upon - by the planning system. We have young people who have no prospect of owning their own homes, we have people living in garden shacks .... and yet the literate, influential, older, well-off middle classes who have managed to find a pleasant 39 Acacia Avenue home have said No! No! No! to any change anywhere. We had a chance to negotiate an adult solution to the country's planning issues but the unelected media and their I'm All Right Jack supporters put paid to that. Well, we now need to put the NIMBYs their place - sadly using 'emergency measures'. If we end up with a country full of huge ugly extensions you know who to blame.

Can anyone point me in the direction of a consultation document on this? The article on the BBC webpage today seems to suggest that there is a document out for consultation already, but I haven't been able to find anything on CLG's website. Thanks

I've been looking as well but spotted nothing yet. I sometimes wonder if anyone has thought through the details before they make the announcements. No doubt it will be published with a big fanfare shortly. Is it just me or is the (often misleading) PR and delays with consultation exercises making it more difficult to keep up to speed with where we are with changes. For example, the day after the statement on pd rights the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport made a press release stating that the government is to make further changes to pd rights to "cut red tape" slowing down broadband infrastructure roll-out. The changes sounded quite draconian but equally worryingly was the fact that this was coming from DCMS and not DCLG.

I have been searching everywhere too for the consultation paper on this and have found nothing. Many clients and members of the public are getting very excited about being able to build their long awaited ballroom-snooker room on the back of their house, and bless...they think these rules are changing next month! The power of misinformed media reports.

Richmond have an interesting idea... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19657931

Given the possible compensation implications of Art.4 Directions I would be surprised if the Council goes down the route advocated by the DCLG spokesman in the BBC article. Conservativehome.blogs.com is reporting Richmond Council leader Lord True as saying : "The Council's officials are "reading through the proposals with legal advisers with a fine tooth-comb to identify any flexibility". That sounds like a serious investment in time and resources to look at this issue so if anyone from Richmond is reading this post can you please ask the responsible officials or legal advisors to send a copy or paste a link here? Looking for "flexibility" - now that sounds scary!

Richmond's very public and aggressive statements might only serve to boost the Government's current anti-planning stance. Some might see it as yet another example of local councillors' and civil servants' opposition to a democratically elected central government. Perhaps now might be a good time for planning departments to "look for flexibility" in the way they work WITH central government rather than continually trying to block or subvert new policies. I'm not sure that the country will be best served if the government finally decides that enough is enough and totally sweeps away the current planning system.

@ Martin Dale well of course people need an extension - now that the garage is full of jerry cans (per Francis Maude's advice) where else can they go? I did hear one suggestion that what is slowing down costly developments might be finances rather than a few hundred £s for an application fee but surely but surely in this day and age no one is down to their last few £thousands?

Eric Pickles gave further clarification(?) on intended pd rights on the Sunday Politics Show on 23rd September 2012. If anyone is interested then look on BBC iPlayer (pd/extensions comments are at 22:30 - 22:56). "Say you have a terraced house and you have a 7m garden length. Under the present rules you can move out 3m or 50% of the garden, whichever is the smaller amount. Under these [new] rules you can move out 6m or 50% so the difference betwen the new rules and the old ones is half a metre." (Eric Pickles - please check as I have poor quality audio though) Hopefully a full explanation will follow shortly. EP also confirmed that there hasn't been any consultation yet.

From my distant memories of Development Management, Pickles' statement would only be true if the said extension were the full width of the garden/yard. If it was half width, the difference between old and new is the full 3m - which is a lot if you happen to live next door.

You're right, Daniel. The 50% restriction does not relate to the length of the garden, It relates only to the total area of ground covered by buildings within the curtilage. Not only could it go the full 6m in your scenario, but the curtilage also includes the front garden. If your front garden is as big as your back garden you can cover the whole of the back garden in single-storey extensions (within the other tolerances). If A Thomas's quote is accurate I'm dismayed that Mr Pickles could get it so wrong when presumably he was briefed up to the eyeballs by those who wrote the regs. Although I suppose that's not saying much. I'm not sure why the press has been focusing on the visual impact of PD rear extensions when to my mind the greater harm will be to the living conditions of neighbours.

I think the 7 meters he is refering to is the 7 meter minimum between the back of the EXTENSION and the rear boundary which is in the current GPDO. I think he means,.. provided there remains a clear 7 meters between the extension and the rear boundary, you can extend 6 meters. this would most likely leave over 50% left (6m extension with 7 m left.) I think i will wait for the consultation.... but it will drive a caoch and horses through any residentual design guide which advocates more than 14m between opposing windows...

I think the 7m is just an arbitrary figure, as the 7m in the GPDO is for extensions of more than one storey, and, as I understand it, the proposals are to exted pd for single storey only. But, like Philip, I think I will wait for the consultation before commenting further.

Apologies - my brain was on a rest-day yesterday so that's why I simply chose to post what I had heard without any comment. Having thought about it today it seems to me that EP's particular scenario works - but only if the new limits were to say that (in a terraced case) one can extend up to 6m in length OR a distance equivalent to 50% of the length of the garden - (whichever is the lesser). That wouldn introduce a new test and leave us needing to agree on the extent of garden (or should that be curtilage?) and the method for identifying the correct "length" measurement course. Philip, as Beverley says above, the 7m reference in the existing GPDO relates to extensions involving "more than one storey" whereas there have been several statements suggesting that the new pd allowances will only affect single storey extensions.

There are examples where LPAs have sought to overrule PD rights using s102 of the Act to effectively revoke the 'perissmion' granted by the Secretary of State. This raises the prospect of neigbours applying pressure to use this provision, especially where say a 5 metre rear extension has recenlty been dismissed on appeal but the applicant then proceeeds with 6 metres under the new PD rights. The SoS does have the final say of course. Does anyone have experiecne of using the provision in relation to PD ?

Did anyone keep Stephen Ibbotson's laws of unintended consequences imagery from last time around? The new consultation's here, for those that haven't seen it yet... http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/planningandbuilding/extendingpdrconsultation

One part in the consultation looks particularly troublesome for the future, and that is the section in paras 31-33 which sets out that they consider developments must be completed within the 3 year relaxation, and that if the developer doesn't notify the lpa of this the development will not be pd. While obviously this may change following the consultation, it seems to me to be a little harsh to suggest that if you complete on the end day you wil be OK but a day later and you are subject to enforcement action. Most importantly there doesn't appear to be any suggestion of what 'completed' should be defined as. If this progresses as suggeted in the consultation I fear significant pressures on enforcement teams at the end of the 3 year period!

Jon, It would still however have to be expedient to take enforcement action and I suggest that being a few days "late" in completion would not make it expedient to take action.

As is so typical the link above no longer works as the website has now changed, I am sure they haven't done it to thwart responses... https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/extending-permitted-development-rights-for-homeowners-and-businesses-technical-consultation