If you want to add a detached garage to your home, whether you need planning will depend on your project falling into the Permitted Development camp or not, as planning consultant Simon Rix explains
Planning law states that you can’t do any building work to or around your house unless a specific rule says you can. So it’s important to know what those rules are before constructing any new structure on your land, including a detached garage.
This article should help you determine whether you can build your garage under Permitted Development rules or whether you need formal planning permission, plus how you could tweak your plans to avoid needing to apply.
IS PLANNING PERMISSION NEEDED?
It depends. For example, if your home is a flat or a maisonette you will need planning permission.
If your project meets certain criteria, outlined below, your garage could be regarded as Permitted Development (PD), which is where you are deemed to have already been granted planning permission by the national PD rules.
If it doesn’t meet these rules, you’ll have to make a formal application for planning consent. This is not normally a problem, but it’s a set of hoops you’ll need to jump through to stay legal, and a planning consultant will be able to help with this.
If you think your project does come under PD rules, but you want to be cast-iron certain, you can get your planning consultant to apply for a Lawful Development Certificate for you to get a legally binding confirmation from your local planning authority that what you want to do really doesn’t need a full planning application.
HOW BIG CAN A GARAGE BE WITHOUT PLANNING PERMISSION?
To use PD rights and avoid going through the hoops of a planning application, your garage would need to be no more than one storey high. This means:
● you’ll need to keep the eaves height to 2.5 metres or less
● the overall height cannot be more than 4 metres for a dual pitched roof
● or no more than 3 metres for any other roof, including flat roofs and single pitched sloping roofs.
However, if your garage is to be within two metres of any curtilage boundary for your house, the maximum total height for PD rights is 2.5 metres. A curtilage boundary is not necessarily your ownership boundary, it could be the boundary between your garden and another piece of land that you own that’s connected to it.
In terms of horizontal size, to use PD rights, no more than half the area of land around the house as it was on 1 July 1948 (or when it was first built if it’s newer than that) can be covered by additions or other buildings, including the garage you want to build.
