Raising garden level, permission required?

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Hampshire
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Hi,

I'm after some advice regarding planning law for raising the level of a rear garden. Basically my adjoining neighbours and my rear gardens are on stepped levels as the houses are built on a slope, the botom half of the garden being lower than the top.

My neighbour has raised up the bottom half of his garden by just over 2'-3' to bring it up to the same level as the top.

He has built a double brick retaining wall around his side of the boundary fence to hold back the infill.

I spoke to a local planning officer this morning who suggested planning permission is probably required but she also seemed concerned about the source of the infill he has used, basically looks like demolition rubble, bricks, concrete etc as this could be contaminated.

I'm concerned that this could possibly cause issues in the future due to drainage or water run off into my garden or possibly collapse of the retaining wall if it's not been built to standard. My other concern is the matter of privacy as what was a 6'6" fence between our gardens is now about 4'5" on his side and can easily be seen over.

Spoke to my neighbour tonight and he has stopped anymore work. He's a really nice guy but he's just been given bad advice from friends it seems and didnt realise it was a planning issue and i hadnt realised what he'd done untill the weekend.

Anyway i'm just looking for advice or someone to point me in the direction of some solid evidence that planning is required before speaking to my nieghbour again. Was hoping i could print off something from the direct.gov planning portal but this does seem to be a grey area.

Thanks in advance.

Steve
 
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Hi did you ever get an answer on this regarding if planning was needed as I'm due to do the same sort of thing but struggling to find information if planning is actually needed or not?
 
If it's a reasonable volume of fill, it would be regarded as an engineering operation and would need planning permission.
 
Tjs, good evening.

It appears that the Post you have resurrected was made 05/08/2013? but never answered.

Indeed the author of the post has not posted anything on the site since that date?

Why not ask your local planning and Building Control authority for the current legislation in your area? after all every local planning authority have subtly differing takes on any problem

Ken.
 
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Thanks ken. I am atm trying to get in contact with my local council but is proving difficult to get through to them, as I saw this by googling I thought maybe they could share a bit of info until I can get through.
 
Tjs, good evening again.

Hopefully someone on the site will have the relevant information.

As I do not live under the English planning system I can be of no assistance at all [nothing unusual there then?]

But there are a lot of contributors in here who can assist as much as they can,

Ken
 
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TJ's when you do get through to your council do post back what their view is. Technically I feel sure Tony1851 is correct, but it may be one of those areas where the planners turn a blind eye as generally people don't complain about it. The other issue may be how you retain any fill to ensure it does not cause a boundary problem. Perhaps one way forward is to seek the view of your neighbours on what you plan to do.

I was reading about it and thought one case particularly interesting where a BBC program did a garden project involving raised levels and "office cubes". There was a problem with that development but not with the raised levels only that the height of the cubes needed to be limited to 3m! - It made me smile because at the time I watched the program and saw the elevated cubes and I thought did they get planning permission for those - apparently not!
 
Hi yep will do. I've been told by a few people that planning wouldn't be needed as the neighbours other fence is the height our new ones would be, so although we would be a few feet higher we wouldnt be looking in there garden. The retaining wall would be either sleepers or brickwork, it's definitely a grey area as I know of a few who have done the same thing as me and they never got permission. When I get a answer I will come back.
 
After a few phone calls I have found out planning permission is required, as my new fence will be over the 2 metre Mark from original ground level, So having to fill forms out and go with the planning application. I never thought and so many other people thought planning permission would be needed so sometimes if in doubt then make the calls.
 

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