neighbour letting out his shed... in lockdown...

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ok so this is a rant, and just to get this out the way - I do not like this guy next door.
we live in a paired, semi detached house, with said neighbour being to our left.
We share a large driveway, with no markings, but in terms of boundary it is divided along the line where the houses meet.

So in the last few weeks we've seen a lot of unknown cars park on his side of the driveway and on 3 occasions his "guests" have parked on our side (not a problem pre lockdown, but this amount of traffic seemed unusual).

We noticed lots of people in his back garden who seemed to stay overnight - eventually we figures he's been letting out a summer house (basically a shed) on Air BNB. He's had over 30 guests in the last 2 months.

From the Air BNB site you can see that the summer house has water / leccy / heating etc, so he's essentially turned it into a habitable dwelling, which would need planning permission.
As it happens in our area operating a holiday let also requires planning approval.

So, why is this bothering me? Years ago we applied for planning to build a new garage (to our right, away from his house). This guy for entirely petty reasons objected to the planners 8 times, all points having been subsequently been rejected by the planning officer. After the garage was built he brought a surveyor to our house (whilst we were out!) and measured the position of the garage with a laser and found it to be the correct size but 50cm in the "wrong" position and made a huge fuss with the planners. We had to apply for retrospective planning approval to keep our new garage in the "wrong" position. I kid you not.

Yes my own complaint is a bit childish but, were in lockdown and you can't have overnight guests - and his summer house is actually a habitable annexe and needs planning approval. So, good folk of OCUK, should I give him hell??
:cry:
 
Sounds abit tit for tat to me.

That said I wouldn't like the idea of new overnight guests being at the side of me on a regular basis.
extremely tit for tat, I know lol
unfortunately we you can't reason with people you have to treat them how they treat you, just to stop escalating their behaviour
 
What's you're history with this guy before you built the garage? Seems extremely petty for something that's none of his business and doesn't affect him. So you must have done something in the past to make him this vindictive. Did you not talk to him at the time to find out what he was playing at? And I would build a small wall between your houses in the front, I would have done that soon after moving in.

We had just moved into our new home at that stage - and spent a lot renovating it (it was empty for several years) and decided to go all-out and get the garage, sort the garden. No particular interaction with this guy, except that he asked if we (at our cost) re build the back garden fence, which we did a gesture of good will. As far as I can tell he's just jealous that our home is nicer than his .
 
am I right in thinking he's breaking the lockdown rules?
if we can't have guests indoors, or indeed overnight, then you can't have Air BNB guests coming to your property
 
If it's entirely separate to his house then he's not inviting guests into his house? If he's following guidelines on disinfecting and cleaning between guests and limiting to key workers and people who have legitimate reason to travel within restrictions then I don't think he's breaking any covid rules.
That doesn't have any bearing on planning rules though so you could probably still cause some trouble for him with that if you wanted to.
thank you for this clarification
 
update to the story by OP...
so I contacted Air-BNB and the short of it is that, the letting is advertised as a "lodge" (glorified shed) which is standalone and separate from the main residence. Given adequate distancing precautions it can be let out during Lockdown. This is of course dependent on the guests being able to justify being in the area and needing to use overnight accommodation.
I also contacted the planning authority - who have not yet responded to my email, but I think I will speak to them just to get this sorted.
Just to clarify, yes there are 2 sides to every story and ultimately I don't care if he gets retrospective approval for his annexe - but given the trouble he's caused us in the past at the very least he should do things by the book.
 
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