Appeal 3307924

The appeal is dismissed.

The main issue is the effect of the appeal proposal upon the character and appearance of the area.

The appeal site comprises a link-detached house within a residential street with a verdant backdrop comprising mature trees located on land to the west. These can be viewed through a quite significant visual gap over the pair of garages belonging to the appeal site and [address] adjoining. Other examples of similar spacings can be found at nos 39 and 41, and nos 43 and [address].

Whilst in itself the Council does not appear to raise any objection to the design of the extension and its impact upon the host dwelling itself, I note from the submissions that no street scene drawing has been provided and which in my mind would tell a different story overall. No 47 has been extended with a two storey gable projection to its front which has had the effect of staggering the building line between the appeal dwelling and that of no 45. Nonetheless whilst the prevailing pattern of development within the locality is not possibly as uniform as the Council suggest, nonetheless the degree of spacing at first floor level between nos 47 and 49 would be materially eroded, by effectively 50%.

By building close to the shared boundary a full two storeys in height, the overall appearance of the host dwelling as proposed to be extended would appear far more cramped within its site and would appear incongruous when having regard to the other paired examples that I have referred to above.

The predominant pattern of development within the street is that associated with relatively open views between each individual property towards the woodland at the rear and whilst these visual gaps do vary quite significantly, nonetheless the existing spaciousness within the street scene would be quite severely eroded. In the absence of any illustrative drawings to show otherwise, I conclude that by virtue of the proximity of the proposed first floor element of the extension to the side boundary of the site, that it would have a harmful enclosing effect, reducing the openness of and giving rise to material harm to the character of the street scene. I say this in spite of the retention of a 5.4m gap between both neighbouring properties.

[name] consider that the proposal would give rise to demonstrable harm to the character and appearance of the area with the proposal contrary to Policy NBE9 of the Hart Local Plan (Strategy and Sites) 2032 and Policy GEN1 (i) of the Hart Local Plan (Replacement) 1996 – 2006 which together require proposals to be in keeping with local character by virtue of, amongst other things, scale, design, massing, layout and siting and to promote, reflect and incorporate the distinctive qualities of a development’s surroundings.

Having regard to the above and all other matters raised by the appellants, I conclude that the appeal be dismissed.