Why Is It Important To Do Research Before Building A Garden Room?

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The benefit of having the permission either in place or having a formal certification - a certificate of lawfulness - for confirmation that something didn't require planning permission doesn't usually happen immediately.
The benefit will come up if you come to let out the property or sell it. Then at some point a surveyor from the buying party will come and visit the property, notice that there's an outbuilding that's been erected, and that will lead to a breadcrumb trail of questions. Before you know it you're going to be asked to prove that outbuilding doesn't, or didn't, require planning permission.
That process can be really stressful for homeowners. It's a source of quite a lot of house sales falling through and it's a source of work for us because, of course, we have to very quickly pull together a planning application or certificate of lawfulness and submit it to the Council. That might take two, or three, sometimes four months, depending on the the District Council or the Borough Council's workload at the time.
That can create real problems with a chain of house sales falling through potentially.
So that might seem like a bit of a perverse outcome, with the Government trying to deregulate a lot of these types of structures through the PD route. But one of the perverse outcomes is that you end up with structures that attract questions from surveyors that you simply can't answer if you don't have the certification in place in one way or another. You don't have to do that up front if it is a Permitted Development building, but it's certainly worthwhile thinking about it in the months or possibly early years having completed the building - getting it signed off formally.
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For more information, see our other videos featuring Planning Consultant Mark Doodes.
Recorded February 2023. This content does not constitute formal advice from New Garden Room Company or Mark Doodes Planning.