Councillors narrowly voted to approve permission
How the house looks now(Image: South Gloucestershire Council)
A planning row has erupted in a village near Bristol after a homeowner applied for planning permission to raise the roof of her cottage. After almost three years South Gloucestershire Council has granted permission for a roof extension despite concerns about overlooking.
The house is located on Hardy Lane just outside Tockington, a village north of Almondsbury. The plans involve raising the ridge line of the roof, to create additional living accommodation, but face objections from Olveston Parish Council and neighbours living nearby.
Councillors on the development management committee voted to permit the plans by four votes to three on Thursday, June 25. A compromise was agreed with a rule about glazed windows to prevent residents being able to see into a neighbouring property.
Rachel Sims, the applicant, said: “The process so far has taken 32 months to get to where we are today. So you can appreciate that this is something that I committed to seeing through to completion. The reason I am so committed is that this home needs alteration, not just for me, but for future families to come, long after I am gone.
“I would like to think that I have left behind something better than when it was acquired. My home might well be an old mill worker’s house, but the way it is configured internally needs reworking to continue to be a home fit for a family today. Once the works are complete, the house will stand the test of time, without changing its existing footprint.”
She added that the current bathroom was narrow and cramped, “barely big enough for a bath”. The main upstairs room has a roof light where people “could easily fall out”, while the ceiling height is too low. Alterations carried out by a previous owner “were not done well”, with damp in the winter and boiling hot temperatures in the summer. But the plans prompted complaints from neighbours.
Becky Elderton, a neighbour, said the roof extension would create “direct overlooking into our front garden, conservatory, porch, and our teenage daughter’s bedroom, causing an unacceptable loss of privacy and giving rise to safeguarding concerns”. She added that the higher roof would “reduce the warm, winter morning sunlight” into her conservatory.
The homeowner already has permitted development rights for a separate extension on the ground floor, known as a “fallback position” in planning jargon. But Ms Elderton claimed that historic aerial photos taken by the RAF show that the cottage was originally separated from its outhouse, which meant the council made a mistake in granting those rights in the first place.
When councillors voted to approve permission, they added a condition so the window in one of the new dormers would have to use glazed, opaque glass. This would reduce the chance of overlooking.