22 August

Following failure to get a Lawful Development Certificate for the ‘Conversion of a single family dwelling house into HMO for 6 units’ the Council issued an enforcement notice, details of which are below. An Appeal is possible but unlikely to succeed, but it could take a long time before the Council can take Court action should the enforcement notice not be complied with.

8 April

As expected, the application for Certificate of Lawful Development has been refused due to the Article 4 Direction. Details of the refusal can be found here and the delegated decision here. The report states that the council visited the property in Feb 2023 and found it had been converted into 7 self contained flats without permission, resulting in the currently in progress enforcement enquiry.

27 March 2023

A new application seeking to obtain a Certificate of Lawful Development for an HMO - details can be found here.

This application did allow us to write our shortest objection ever. We simply said ‘A4D’, just three characters, which the Planning Officer at LBB will understand to mean that we consider that the Article 4 Direction means that this application must fail.

6 December 2022

An application (ref: 22/04552) for a Certificate of Lawful Development has been submitted to allow for a class C4 HMO (up to 6 unrelated people sharing facilities) with 6 units within the existing building.

We have objected to this application. Any comments must be made by 23rd December.

5 December 2022

The application for a dormer (retrospective) as part of a single family home has been approved.

23 August 2022

The application for 7 bed sit flats has been refused

Report

Decision

However, one can expect this to go to Appeal where it will undoubtedly loose. We suspect the owner is simply trying to spin this out.

A decision regarding the garden building is still awaited

7 May 2022

Two new applications have been submitted. One is for 7 bedsits in the existing house and one is to 'regularise' the lack of planning permission for the garden building.

The main 'crime' of the outbuilding is that the finish is ugly when viewed from Hillbrow Road.

We have objected to the bedsits here.

We have objected to the garden building here

9 February 2022

Permission refused.

Report

Decision Letter

Enforcement Action details

We have submitted an objection as follows:-

This application seeks to significantly intensify the use of this property from a six-bedroom family house to a nine bedroom (including outbuilding) accommodating up to 16 people. The applicant seeks a C4 HMO but in reality what is proposed is a Sui Generis HMO.

Accommodation

It is not explicitly stated but it appears that the outbuilding and rooms 1,2,3,5,6,8 would be double beds and rooms 4 and 7 single making 16 bed spaces in total.

Accommodation in rooms 2 and 3 appears to be poor quality because of being next to the busy and noisy communal area and because of being small for two people (each). They are also only just bigger than the usual 11.5m2 minimum that would be required for a double bedroom.

Room 2 also appears to have minimal natural light.

The outbuilding is a dwelling in its own right and appears to be significantly smaller than the minimum area of 50m2 required for a 2-person dwelling, which occupancy is explicitly envisaged. The bedroom is also smaller than the usual 11.5m2 minimum that would be required for a double bedroom.

Outbuilding

Conversion to a dwelling would appear to be against the council’s Policy 3 of resisting tandem development.

Parking

Pressure on parking is likely to intensify in an already heavily parked road. When the previous extension 18/00716/FULL6 was granted permission in 2018, the following condition was applied: -

Before commencement of the use of the land or building hereby permitted parking spaces and/or garages and turning space shall be completed in accordance with the approved details and thereafter shall be kept available for such use and no permitted development whether permitted by the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order (England) 2015 (or any Order amending, revoking and re-enacting this Order) or not shall be carried out on the land or garages indicated or in such a position as to preclude vehicular access to the said land or garages.

Reason: In order to comply with Policy T3 of the Unitary Development Plan and to avoid development without adequate parking or garage provision, which is likely to lead to parking inconvenient to other road users and would be detrimental to amenities and prejudicial to road safety

Refuse

It is not clear what the refuse arrangements will be for the proposed use.

Policy 9

Policy 9 of the Local Plan states:-

Residential Conversions
A proposal for the conversion of a single dwelling into two or more self-contained
residential units or non-self-contained accommodation will be permitted provided that:
a - the amenities of occupiers of neighbouring dwellings will not be harmed by
loss of privacy, daylight or sunlight or by noise and disturbance and;
b - the resulting accommodation will provide a high quality living environment for
the intended occupiers and;
c - on and off street parking resulting from the development will not cause unsafe
or inconvenient highway conditions and;
d - the character and appearance of the area is not adversely affected and;
e -there will not be a detrimental impact on housing choice in the locality and
where accommodation at ground floor level is proposed, preference is given for
family housing units with direct access to a garden, and
f - safe and secure access is provided to each dwelling.

We would make the following comments:-

It seems inevitable that the amenity of neighbours will be harmed
See above for comments on quality of accommodation
See above re parking
We are concerned that a Sui Generis HMO is out of keeping with the area as it is clearly characterised by family homes.
Although there is a ‘family room’ shown on a drawing, the D&A statement implies couples staying in bedrooms 2 and 3 and not a family. In any event, it is not clear how, were permission to be granted, it could be ensured that these rooms were used for a family and the family room not used as a general communal area for all residents.

79 Coniston Road

17 November 2024