Conservatory Planning Permission Guidelines
- You live in a terraced house (regardless of position in the terrace) and your conservatory would increase the volume of the original house by 50 cubic metres or 10% (whichever is the greater)
- You live in a semi detached or detached house or bungalow and the increase would be 70 cubic metres or 17% (whichever is the greater)
- Regardless of house type, the size of the original property would increase by moor than 115 cubic metres. The original house refers to the house as it was built from new, and before any extensions were added.
Any part of your conservatory comes within 2 metres of a boundary, if it is more than 4 metres high at any point.
More than half of the available land adjacent to the house would be used up by the conservatory.
If any buildings that would normally not be counted as extensions such as garages and sheds come within 5 metres of proposed conservatory the volume of the building can count against your allowance.
If your house is a listed building, or in a conservation area.
If there is any covenant in your deeds’ put there by the original builder or land owner prohibiting future building work.
For the latest planning guidelines and regulations please visit the Government Planning Portal.
Whilst the information given on this page is done so in good faith, it is neither exclusive nor exhaustive; we would therefore advise that you check with your local planning office if you are uncertain about any aspect of the rules governing these matters.
[August 2004]
Instabuild Limited, who supply a unique steel base and modular wall system to the conservatory industry, received an unexpected boost this week in the form of written approval from Thames Water to use their system to build conservatories inside the 3 Metre exclusion zone without the need to enter into a ‘building over agreement’ with the authority.
In recent years regulations have been put in place by water authorities to protect drains and sewers that lay within 3 meters of the proposed conservatory from potential damage caused by building work. In order to ensure these regulations are adhered to, companies must by law gain approval from the water authority before work can commence. The CCTV inspection process that is then undertaken can cost either the company or their client many hundreds of pounds. Failure to comply with this could result in, problems for the householder when trying to sell the property, possible enforced removal of the conservatory, and prosecution of the company involved.
Until now many water authorities have been slow to recognise officially that the Instabuild system can be used in situations where there is cause for concern regarding drains and sewers, and have insisted that a normal application be made before the work can commence.
However this week Thames Water have written to an Instabuild registered installer with the following comment, “ I confirm that as you will be adding no extra loading onto the sewer through the use of pad foundations nor restricting our access to the sewer in any way, a building over agreement will not be required”.
The Managing Director of Instabuild said ‘this is great news for our company. Most water authorities recognise that the Instabuild system is the Ideal product when underground pipes are in the vicinity of the build, but they usually still ask for official applications to be lodged. This is the first time we have been given the go ahead without the need for a ‘Building over agreement’. I’m sure other authorities will now follow suit and hopefully encourage companies to protect drains by using Instabuild.
