Appeal 6002877

The appeal is allowed and planning permission is granted for detached car port to the front elevation at [site address] , Warsash, Hampshire [postcode] in accordance with the terms of application [name]/25/1233/FP subject to the conditions listed at the end of this Decision.

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

The appeal property comprises a detached chalet bungalow located on the south side of [address] in an established residential area within the urban settlement boundary.

The road comprises a main route linking the urban areas of Titchfield and Warsash. As such, it is wide and busy. It also comprises a variety of different property designs, including predominantly detached, houses, chalet bungalows and bungalows. Throughout the road there are a mix of dwelling materials, roof forms, front building lines and frontage boundary treatments.

Properties are generally set well-back from the road frontage, and where the front boundary treatment comprises low boundary walls, fences or landscaping, this has resulted in an open and spacious street scene. The appeal site lies in such a stretch of the road where it forms one of a row of bungalows and chalet bungalows which are highly visible from the street due to their low front and side boundary walls which enclose large and open front gardens.

The host property is set well-back from the appeal site frontage behind a predominantly gravel-surfaced front garden which is used for parking. In this respect, the appellant has confirmed that the existing garage to the rear of the dwelling and its access driveway are too narrow to satisfactorily accommodate a modern car.

The proposed car port would be positioned adjacent to the site frontage and the neighbouring site at No.192. As such, it would be highly visible from the public realm and would result in some erosion of the spacious front garden area and some obscuring of the front elevation of the property.

However, due to the permeable open-sided design of the proposal, together with its low height and shallow hipped roof, the impact upon site openness would not be significant. Also, it would only occupy a modest proportion of the overall front garden area.

Moreover, the current use of the land in front of the dwelling, including the ground where the car port would be sited, for the parking of vehicles, means that spaciousness within the front garden area of the property is already eroded to a large extent and the proposal would only result in a small degree of additional obscuring of the front of the dwelling in views from the road.

The proposal would be viewed as a subsidiary light-weight timber structure within the front garden which would retain the visual prominence of the dwelling in views from the road and would not appear unduly visually dominant or enclosing within the streetscape.

There are no similarly positioned structures along the south side of [address] within the row of bungalows and chalet bungalows within which the appeal site sits. However, I saw during my site visit, that frontage treatments within the road are very mixed, and that within the locality of the appeal site there are garage buildings within some front gardens. These include No.174 on the same side of the road and Nos. 177, 179, 185 and 189 on the north side of the road. These buildings have a more solid and enclosing design than the appeal scheme.

Moreover, I also saw that many frontages along this section of the road have lost their street-facing openness due to the presence of mature boundary landscaping and trees.

As such, I find that the proposed car port would not appear unduly incongruous within the overall prevailing mixed character street scene of this part of [address] and that screening the car port by means of landscape planting would not be necessary to make the scheme acceptable.

Having regard to the above, I therefore conclude that the proposal would not materially harm the character and appearance of the area. As such, it would accord with Policy D1 of the Fareham Local Plan 2037 (April 2023) in so much as this policy, amongst other things, seeks to ensure that new development will be of high-quality design to and responds appropriately to the positive elements of local character.

This accords with Chapter 12 of the National Planning Policy Framework 2024 which seeks to achieve well-designed places.

I have considered the imposition of conditions in light of the tests set out in Paragraph 57 of the Framework and the National Planning Practice Guidance (PPG). In addition to the standard implementation condition (1), it is necessary to define the plans in the interests of certainty (2). Given the visual prominence of the proposal it is necessary to ensure that the external materials of the development are appropriate, in the interests of the character and appearance of the area (3).

For the above reasons, I conclude that the appeal should succeed, and that planning permission be granted subject to conditions.

The development hereby permitted shall be begun before the expiration of 3 years from the date of this permission.

The development hereby permitted shall be carried out in accordance with the following plans: Buy a Plan Location Plan Ordnance Survey Ref 00781125- B6183F; Buy a Plan Site Plan Ordnance Survey Ref 00781126-FD3BA1 and [name] and Roof Plan Ref Hampshire Garden [name].

The development hereby permitted shall be constructed in timber in accordance with the external materials specified within the Design and [name]. ***End of Conditions***