cabin in neighbours garden

Evangeline Fast Pony wrote: »

regulation for a living area I want

It is wooden with what look like aluminium doors
concrete floor
Not attached to the house
Standalone down the garden

Yes, thats a shed, see the exemptions i posted above. May people call them garden rooms, offices etc but they are considered sheds. If you sleep in it it is no longer a shed and requires planning.

Meredith2016 wrote: »

Can anyone offer us advice as to how best to deal with this? Anyone been in a similar situation?
Thanks in advance

It's hard to say but it might make sense to talk to them first before any further steps are taken - you estimate that it is 29 sq m, and from what I have read, cabins under 25 sqm should not require planning (although local rules can differ). So your guess on the size of it might be off and it could be under that limit.

The problem is then, if you just report your neighbor to the council, then the council comes to have a look and the cabin ends up being under 25 sq m or , and the local rules do allow it, the neighbor will be aware that one of their neighbors has reported them, and it could easily cause some friction in the future, especially if they discover it is you who reported them.

I suppose in the situation you are in, I'd check the specific local council rules on cabins, see if you can find out what model their cabin is (you could ask conversationally where they got it) so that you know the measurements, and depending on the first two answers, then either talk to the neighbor or the council.

Evangeline Fast Pony wrote: »

could you report it anonymously?are the council obliged to act on an anonymous report and check the building?

I know that here in Wexford, any planning complaint must be in writing, on a prescribed form that you download from the council website or pick up from one of the council offices. It must include your name, address, and phone number, and there's a section too for where you have to outline how you're affected by the thing you're complaining about.

I presume it's to weed out frivolous or vexatious complaints. Don't know if it's the same with other councils, though.

runawaybishop wrote: »

How thick do you think walls are in a shed? At 29sqm it is pretty much guaranteed to be outside the exemptions, and that's before you go looking at available garden left, distance from boundaries and if it is habitable or not.

Op says it's a cabin. 29sqm gross would be about 25sqm net.

I've a large basic garden shed. It's 16'x10' 2". That's a gross 15.1 sqm.
The net internal space is 13.53 sqm

So add about 4cm additional wall thickness and a 29sqm gross is under 25sqm net internal

Uncle Pierre wrote: »

I know that here in Wexford, any planning complaint must be in writing, on a prescribed form that you download from the council website or pick up from one of the council offices. It must include your name, address, and phone number, and there's a section too for where you have to outline how you're affected by the thing you're complaining about.

I presume it's to weed out frivolous or vexatious complaints. Don't know if it's the same with other councils, though.

Correct you have to put in writing before they will act.

runawaybishop wrote: »

It's a log cabin though, not a block shed. I would be surprised if the internal space is 25 or less.

Mine is a bog standard slatted wooden shed for storing tools and unused stuff from the aldi middle aisle

No insulation, felted roof, as bog standard as they come and the net internal area is 10% less than the gross external size.

A building over 25sqm needs a fire cert i believe.

Another option is to call the fire officer, you could be doing them a great favor if its going to be inhabited.

I was considering building a log cabin in my garden that would be 24m2. There is an existing shed in the garden that was built long before we bought the house. Would the existing shed in the garden count towards the 25m2 and push us over the 25m2 exemption for planning permission?

Obviously I don't know where you are, what size your garden is, what you or neighbours can see from gardens or houses, how close your neighbours are, or what your relationship with them is like, but I'd advise that there's still time then to talk to them before work starts.

It would be the neighbourly thing to do to explain what you're planning and see if they have any concerns and what you can do to address them, rather than just having them look out one day and see construction starting. Because you can be sure that if they do have concerns, they'll be a lot harder to deal with then.

I won't go into the exact details of our own neighbour's thing that I mentioned above, but it's well above the 25 sq. metre exemption limit. But after listening to my wife's concerns, they built it on a different part of their site to where they'd originally planned, and put in some mature trees for screening purposes. If they hadn't done that, I daresay we'd have been on to the Council all right because of the strength of my wife's feelings about it, and then they'd have had far bigger issues.

So, there was a compromise solution agreed when the people with the plan spoke to the neighbours first, instead of just going ahead and hoping for the best. The same thing might work out for yourself, instead of being left wondering or having to deal with it at a later stage.