House sale technicalities

A cautionary tale!

After Catrin was born we decided that I could not longer use our great big main bedroom as my study because the children would need a bedroom each. So we replaced the garage door with a window and personal door, and plastered the walls and put in a ceiling. Before doing it I contacted the council to see if we needed planning permission. No they said. End of story.

Not quite. Solicitors are more cautions than they used to be, so they wrote to me telling me that I needed planning permission, building regs approval and permission for change of use to use the garage as a study. "No I don't - the council told me" Then you need a letter, they said.

I phoned the council. They said to get a letter I needed to fill in a form (enquiries prior to planning?) and I would get an answer in 4 - 6 weeks.

The form was really funny. It asked for a sketch of your house, showing the new structures you were proposing to build. My form showed no new structures at all. Well, we never built nothing, did we!

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