It's Just a Garden Room: A UK Planner's Guide to Curtilage, Incidental Use and Outbuilding Enforcement

"It's just a garden room." "It's just a granny annexe." "It's just a gym ....there's no kitchen."

In planning, the word "just" is doing an enormous amount of work. And behind almost every domestic enforcement case, every disputed permitted development certificate, and every retrospective application for an outbuilding that somehow acquired bifold doors and a shower room, you will find the same cluster of misunderstood concepts: curtilage, incidental use, and the precise point at which a shed becomes a dwelling.

These are not niche issues. Annexes, outbuildings and garden structures make up a significant share of domestic planning applications and an even bigger share of enforcement complaints. They are the cases where permitted development rights collide with common sense, where applicants draw red lines around land they hope qualifies as curtilage, and where the gap between what someone has built and what they had permission to build is occupied entirely by optimism.

This book works through the full picture. What curtilage actually means in law and how the courts have defined it. What incidental use requires and where it stops. How Class E permitted development rights apply and where they do not. How outbuildings become hidden dwellings. How annexe applications are assessed and what conditions and obligations follow. What happens when use drifts, buildings lie, and everyone has an opinion.

Written by a chartered planner with nearly forty years of development management experience, drawing on case law, appeal decisions and the kind of hard-won practical judgment that comes from standing on difficult sites and writing the report afterwards.

If you deal with domestic planning cases, this is the book that explains the part everyone gets wrong. If you are in dispute with the Council - this might help....

Price: £9.99