Can I Move One Of My Children Into My Garden Room?

Planning Consultant Mark Doodes answers your questions.

New Garden Room company offers a one-stop shop for your Garden Room, and that includes access to planning professionals.

We often receive questions from potential customers regarding the planning requirements and realise it causes a lot of uncertainty and stress, so we invited a planning expert to come and meet our Managing Director, Darren Field and discuss the issues impacting you – separating the truths from the myths and cutting through the noise to ensure you become more informed.

Incidental Use vs Ancilliary Use

There are two phrases within the General Permitted Development Order and the PD order – that’s where the phrase PD rights comes from – that people need to be aware of.

The first one is the word ‘incidental’ and the next one is ‘ancillary’.

Just covering incidental first of all. An incidental use is something that you wouldn’t normally do in a house, so for example, a workshop, a swimming pool, an office. You wouldn’t normally expect to do those things in a house necessarily and so they are considered to be incidental to the enjoyment of the house.

The second one, ancillary, is where you effectively have an extension of the floor area of the house – so something that would normally happen within the house, like cooking for example or sleeping accommodation. That would be an ancillary use.

Now that may seem a bit nuanced, or even like you’re splitting hairs, but in the regulations only the ancillary ones require planning permission.

The incidental uses are permitted development, so you wouldn’t need to make a planning application for those. So in answer to your question of moving your children into a Garden Room on a permanent basis – that would certainly require planning permission.

Each Planning Application is assessed on its own merits

But don’t be afraid of making a planning application, because each application is assessed on its own merits and the relationship of the outbuilding to neighbouring properties. For example, whether it has its own access or parking, or its own immunity space, because the council may be worried that the outbuilding would become a separate dwelling at some point in the future – either through the passage of time or subsequent application, for example.

And that may be considered to be harmful to the character of the area or the community of of neighbours, and in this instance, the planning system is trying to act in the wider public interest – so looking at any harm that might arise to neighbouring properties.

A professional planner can help talk you through the circumstances of your case and offer some advice, or potentially a strategy or approach to maximise and streamline your way through the planning system. So it’s always worth taking advice in advance.

For more information, see our other videos featuring Planning Consultant Mark Doodes.

Recorded February 2023. This content does not constitute formal advice from New Garden Room Company or Mark Doodes Planning.