Real life | 13 June 2019

When is planning permission for four loft windows actually planning permission for two? Or simultaneously vice versa? It’s a very tricky question. After spending a week in the nine circles of hell that constitute local authority planning, I have narrowed my loft conversion problems down to two possible options.

Either I’d got planning permission for four windows and it was revised down to two, or I’d got planning for two windows and it was revised up to four.

Half the planning department at the local council think it was the former and half the latter. Building Control, meanwhile, said they always bow to planning. In other words, they think it’s two and four.

It all started with a note from my architect when the permission came through two years ago. Congrats, he said. There was only one thing I wasn’t allowed. Four roof lights became two after complaints from neighbours. That sounded about right.

Most of my neighbours have lots of loft windows. One neighbour has so many that from the street it looks like he has more Veluxes than roof tiles.

But of course nimbyism doesn’t work by letting you have what they’ve got. There are people who would put 74 loft windows in their house and object to you having even one if they could.

So I wasn’t surprised that neighbours had objected to me having two roof lights front and two back, and that the planners had bowed to their demands and cut me down to one each side.

In any case, I ran out of money and the loft wasn’t begun. But whenever I get a bit of money in, I try to start it. And the same thing happens. No one can decide what I got permission for.