Garden Grabbing

The house behind my own (Best Revenge) is actually a bungalow, a dormer bungalow to be exact. It is a perfectly nice house, sorry bungalow, but by no means lavish. In fact a family larger than the married couple and cat that currently occupy it, might possibly refer to it as modest.

The house next to it (but still behind mine, if you follow) is a rather more extravagant affair, and the one below that – yes, that’s right, next to mine – is a comfortably sized four bedroomed job. We don’t necessarily see that much of the neighbours, unless we want to, because we are blessed with a fair old distance between us, which in summer in particular is so dense with leaves that it’s easier to telephone if you want to check that the neighbours are at home, than peer through the undergrowth.

Which is a long winded way of introducing a comment on our new government’s latest pronouncement on planning: there shall be an end to garden grabbing. Garden grabbing refers to the practice of obtaining planning approval to put a new dwelling in the garden of an existing one. What’s so heinous about that, that it needs some new planning legislation?

The idea seems to be that we are losing valuable green space in towns and suburbs, so the practice must stop. But why do we need new legislation?  Current policies exist to prevent overcrowding, overlooking, overindulgence etc. And in any case, I thought it was not so long ago that we were being exhorted to ensure a minimum density in residential schemes to reduce the pressure to develop virgin land.

I agree we need green space in towns and suburbs but to term any development within existing residential curtilage as ‘garden grabbing’ (reminds me a bit of ‘milk snatching’…) and to threaten legislation to stop it is using the proverbial heavy instrument to crack a nut.

Creative insertion of new dwellings in garden plots is the lifeblood of many smaller  architectural practices. It could also turn out to be a nimby’s charter.

What’s this got to do with my neighbour in the dormer bungalow? Well, the guy that lived there before the present occupant, couldn’t manage all the garden, so he sold off part of it and a new dwelling was built. In fact he did this three times and the dwellings that were built included my own, the neighbours to the side and the ones above them.

Now given that all of the four dwellings I referred to at the beginning of this entry presently has a garden of between a third and a half of an acre, I don’t really see the problem.

So, watch out anyone who finds themselves with a garden that is more than they can manage. Moving house may soon be your only option, unless letting it return to the wild appeals.