Garden Rooms and the latest permitted development rules for Class E detached garden buildings.

Garden rooms have discovered a bit of a renaissance since the 2008 GPDO revision to the Permitted Development Rights. Until October 2008, most detached garden rooms in Article 1(5) land would have required formal Planning Permission which would have been resisted by the Planning Department.

Therefore a lot of the previous possible market for the detached garden rooms business was denied.

The new 2008 PD rights for Class E detached garden room buildings now enjoy much greater freedom to erect an ancillary garden room within the residential curtilage of a dwelling house without the requirement for entering into the lottery of being granted Planning Consent.

Although added controls on the dimensional constraints of such a garden structure have been installed for complying with Permitted Development rights, they are not that onerous that would be obstructive to most home owners.

As a rule, any detached garden room installed within the garden of a dwelling house that is within a Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), The Broads or a national Park must be within 20M of an existing wall of the dwelling or the area outside this zone canmnot exceed more than 10 square metres.

The PD rules are again more restricted for Conservation Areas and AONB locations as the location of the garden room must not between the side wall and the curtilgae boundary of the dwelling.

However, most homeowners are desperate to avoid the requirement for a formal Planning Application for their garden room as most know that it will involve the public consultation process and all the vagaries of the planning system where even a modest structure for a detached garden room will probably be denied approval based upon some obscurely worded and overly oppressive interpretation of a local Planning Policy document.

Therefore, most homeowners will now accept a comprise as to the siting of the garden room in order to avoid the hassles and costs of dealing with the Planning Department.

For a diagram of the restrictions affecting detached garden rooms click here.