Revised Residential Permitted Development |
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Revised Residential Permitted Development Rights
as of 1st October 2008 The rights to build extensions to houses and undertake other domestic alterations without the need to obtain planning permission from local planning authorities have been amended by the Government. These rights are often referred to as “Permitted Development Rights”. The new permitted development rights are set out in “The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (Amendment) (No. 2) (England) Order 2008” (the GDPO 2008) [http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2008/uksi_20080675_en_1] and came into force on 1 October 2008. The new GDPO seeks to simply the Permitted Development Right regime thus reducing the instances when it will be necessary to apply for planning permission. In the case of extensions for example the old volumetric allowances of 50m2 and 70m3 for terraced and non-terraced houses have been dispensed with and replaced with more references to distances relative to rear or side boundaries, depths relative to rear elevations and heights. The new Permitted Development Rights will therefore in many instances allow larger extensions to be built, including some 2 storey additions, without the need to apply for planning permission. The new Order does however introduce greater controls over the formation of hardstandings, by restricting the area that can be created to 5 square metres and requiring any new area to surfaced with a porous material or free draining to a porous area. The amendments to the Order introduce new restrictions in areas that have been designated as “World Heritage” sites.Comment The new regime will be more permissive. Many additions to houses that are out of sight from a public view point and/or will have no direct bearing upon a neighbour’s enjoyment of his or her house will now not require permission from a local planning authority. The relaxation of Permitted Development rights is seen by the Government as a means of reducing the number of householder type planning applications that have to be submitted, thus freeing up local authority officer time to deal with more complex or contentious forms of development. Many applications for extensions submitted in the past have been of an uncontentious nature and such submissions are now viewed as having been unnecessary. However the Government’s prediction that in the region of 25% fewer householder type applications will be submitted could be rather optimistic, not least because there is likely to be increase in the submission of Lawful Development Certificate (LDC) applications as the means by which home owners check that what they are proposing does not require planning permission. On the face of it the introduction of a more relaxed householder Permitted Development regime should be good news for those involved with promoting larger scale residential and commercial developments, because planning authorities should have greater capacity available to process more complex applications. However the changes to the GDPO in practice may not mean that local authority performance for processing applications for non-domestic works will necessarily improve. This is because Councils may take the view that they do not need employ as many planners, offering them costs savings without improving capacity. Alternatively potentially saved staff resources will in practice become involved with processing an increased number of LDC applications or taking on enforcement duties as the number of neighbour enquiries about allegedly unauthorised works increase.
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