Appeal 3338815

The appeal is dismissed.

On 1 April 2023, Cumberland Council replaced Cumbria County Council, Allerdale Borough Council, Carlisle City Council and Copeland Borough Council. The development plans for the merged local planning authorities will remain in place for the area within the new authority until such time as they are revoked or replaced. For the purposes of this appeal, the development plan comprises the Carlisle District Local Plan 2015-2030 (CDLP).

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

The appeal property is a semi-detached two storey house located on a busy main arterial route into Carlisle city centre. It forms part of a row of houses with similar design origins and characteristics. They are generally all set back from the road by a footway with a wide grass verge and generous front gardens with driveways. Houses here feature wide bay windows in centrally located pairs.

Where properties have been extended to the side, these have been sympathetically carried out and retain their traditional character and appearance including hipped roofs. Where render or pebbledash finishes have been utilised, it is mainly restricted to upper floors and side elevations. The proposal before me comprises a two-storey side extension with a gabled roof and a projecting two-storey gabled feature on the front elevation.

The Council’s ‘[name] Planning Document (SPD) advises that in order to ensure good design, extensions should respect the original design and not seek to dominate the building. Furthermore, they should be clearly subordinate to the original dwelling.

The roof of the main side extension would be neither set down or set back from the main roof of the dwelling. The resultant structure would appear bulky and incongruous, creating and extension which would not be subordinate to the original dwelling and introducing a roof form which would be alien to the street scene. The addition of a projecting gabled element on the front elevation would exacerbate the incongruous appearance of the proposal.

Nor would the use of buff render on this element of the proposal be in keeping with the predominantly brick elevations of the host property and those surrounding it. As a result, the cumulative impact of the various elements of the proposal would have a harmful visual effect on the surrounding area.

My attention has been drawn to a similar extension on a property a short distance from the appeal site on the opposite side on [site address] . I do not have the full details of the proposal and how it came into being. However, from the information before me and from what I saw on site, it is evident that the context of that property differs from the proposal before me. in that instance it appears to be part of a pair of semi-detached properties which stand alone with new development on either side, some of which have front gable features, separated by a wide main road and some distance from the appeal property, whereas the appeal proposal is located in a row of semi-detached properties with homogeneous characteristics. I have in any event, determined the appeal on its own merits with regard to the information before me and from my own observations. The existence of this development does not persuade me that the proposal before me is acceptable or leads me to an alternative conclusion.

Accordingly, I conclude that the proposal would have an adverse effect on the character and appearance of the appeal property and the area. The proposal would conflict with [name] HO8 and SP6 which seek to ensure that development which seek to ensure that development respond to local context and relates to the existing building in terms of scale. The proposal would also to fail to follow guidance in the Council’s Achieving Well Designed Housing Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) that extensions must be of an appropriate scale and not dominate the original dwelling.

For the reasons given above, having considered the development plan as a whole and all relevant material considerations, I conclude that the appeal should be dismissed.