House Renovation

While planning the renovation of your house in the UK, it is a good idea to check whether you will need the permission for these works.

While performing smaller renovations, consisting in changing interior design, buying new furniture or installing solar panels, you will not need any special permits.

But if you are planning a more comprehensive rebuilding of your place, you will need the permit issued by Local Planning Authority. In order to obtain it, you need to submit the application. Issuing the permit is connected with the necessity to pay the fee, which varies according to the scope of planned works, but usually oscillates around £100-200 (fee calculator is available at www.planningportal.gov.uk). If the paperwork is not ready before the works begin, you can come back to it when it is completed, but then you need to remember that the costs will increase.

“Illegal” renovation is not worth the risk – if you do not document your works, you can expect not only high penalties, but also problems with selling your property in the future.

You DO NOT need the permit if you’re planning to:

• repaint external walls of your house,
• install anti-theft alarm on the facade of your house,
• replace old doors and windows with new, resembling previous ones,
• repair, replace rain gutter,
• install solar panels on the roof,
• reconstruct, remove, add the chimney,
• build an extension, unless it is wider than half of the width of your house and taller than 4 m,
• harden front garden surface (on condition that you use water-permeable material, e.g. gravel, special concrete or porous asphalt),
• plant trees in your garden,
• cover not more than 50 per cent of the surface of your garden with buildings.

You may need the permit if you’re planning to:

• install a satellite antenna on the facade of your building,
• install a windmill on your roof,
• build an extension wider than half of the width of your house and having more than one storey.

You will for sure need the permit if you want to:

• reconstruct, build additional wall, fencing or gate (over 1 m tall in the place adjacent to the street/pavement and over 2 m tall in other places),
• harden the surface of more than 5 square meters of your front garden with the use of materials impermeable to water,
• build a porch over the entrance with the floor surface exceeding 3 square meters and the height of more than 3 m above ground level or situated at the distance shorter than 2 m from the border of the adjacent plot or street.

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Mrówka Building Supplies, the biggest Polish builder wholesale distributor in the UK, sponsored the article “Renovation of your house in the UK