Gove planning shake-up ‘risks suburban civil war’

MICHAEL Gove has triggered a backlash over plans to let homeowners build extensions with no planning permission.

The Housing Secretary was accused of sparking a potential ‘free for all’ that could spoil the character of long-preserved towns and lead to wars between neighbours.

A consultation on permitted development rights, published yesterday, proposes to let homeowners build wider and taller extensions without planning consent.

This includes L-shaped wraparounds, loft conversions and kitchen extensions.

It lays out plans to scrap rules that mean a home and any extension cannot make up more than 50 per cent of the land surrounding it, known as the ‘curtilage’.

It also proposes to allow homeowners to convert as much loft space as they like without permission.

The proposals are part of a wider shake-up to planning rules unveiled on Monday. Changes mean permission for homes will be automatically granted in urban areas that do not meet their building targets.

Red tape will also be slashed so empty offices and shops can be converted into homes more easily. But David Toogood, from Harding Chartered Surveyors in south-west London, said: ‘If you let neighbours make these changes to their properties without controlling it, you’ll create a civil war. It won’t work.’

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed the measures would ‘protect our precious country-covers side’ by leaving the Green Belt untouched while helping to boost house-building.

Ministers believe the proposal to allow potentially ‘millions’ of extensions could provide a boost to small and mediumsized developers. Tory MP Greg Smith, whose constituency rural Buckinghamshire, said he supported small extensions without planning permission but there must be limits.

He added: ‘This does have the potential to pit neighbour against neighbour as if we’re getting into the realms of an extra three- storey extension on the backs of houses, that’s going to cause big disputes.’

Steve Double, Tory MP for St Austell and Newquay in Cornwall, said that there had to be ‘proper checks and balances’ to the proposals.

Noble Francis, from trade group the Construction Products Association, said: ‘Extensions and rebuilding homes can often lead to conflict between neighbours so an easing of the planning system could lead to more conflict.’

‘This could lead to neighbour conflict’