Four flats in one house without planning permission

[usemobile]

Hi


Whats happens if their are 4 self contained flats in one house with out pp but next door neighbors are good and their is no chance of complaints from general public.

Do the council check the properties randomly or even if they have doubt they on their own by knoking the door....

Generally how do they identify & whats their interest

Any experiance on this kind of issue

Keith

[jeffrey]

Are the flats:
a. sold on long leases: or
b. merely sublet on ASTs?

[usemobile]

Not SOLD , No lease , No AST

Just Family & Friends living in the house with separate(kitchens,bath,lockable entrance within the house) but all bills as one house

[Poppy]

Not sure that these are self-contained flats.

Let the members try to figure out if you have an HMO (house in multiple occupation) and need to contact your local authority or council about applying for a licence.

Please provide short answers to the following:


Does each flat have a lockable front door?
Does each flat have a kitchen?
Does each flat have a bathroom and toilet?
How many people live in each flat?
How many floors does the whole building have?

[usemobile]

Not sure that these are self-contained flats.

Let the members try to figure out if you have an HMO (house in multiple occupation) and need to contact your local authority or council about applying for a licence.

Please provide short answers to the following:


Does each flat have a lockable front door?
Does each flat have a kitchen?
Does each flat have a bathroom and toilet?
How many people live in each flat?
How many floors does the whole building have?


Thanks for your response....we cant approach council in this situation. Below your answers

1) Yes, each flat have lockable door
2) Yes, each have their Kitchen
3) Yes, each have bath and toilet
4) 2 people in each of them
5) Its normal semi detached house with Ground & First floor.

Only we have 3 extra kitchens in the house but bath & toilets are according to planning permissions approval

How council will know this kind of situations-
1) will they know by random checkings ?
2) or from electroll registers ?
3) Neighbours complaint ?
4) Do they have other sources to check ?
5) Even if they have doubt they come straight away by knocking the door ?

Your experence is advisable

keith

[Poppy]

What do you fear if you or your neighbours contact the council?

[Richard Webster]

Most Councils have too much to do to check this kind of thing on a random basis and although they might find something out by looking at the electoral register, why would they want to do that?

Most likely they will only find out if a neighbour complains. After the Council have written to you about it, the locks disappear from the doors and you are all one big happy extended family! How will they be able to prove anything? Will they want to use resources in trying?

(This is from experience I had as a local authority planning solicitor 30 years ago - the position may have changed - but I would suspect local authorities are more strapped for resources now than then.)

[usemobile]

What do you fear if you or your neighbours contact the council?

Council wont allow to keep more then one kitchen in the property, they may ask to remove the kitchens and make it has a single house with one kitchen.

Thats the problem i believe

[jeffrey]

usermoblie: who converted/altered the house- was it you or a predecessor of yours- and how long ago?

[usemobile]

usermoblie: who converted/altered the house- was it you or a predecessor of yours- and how long ago?


Its my Dad (converted a month ago) and offcourse iam using one of the flat.

[brightspell]

Hi


Whats happens if their are 4 self contained flats in one house with out pp but next door neighbors are good and their is no chance of complaints from general public.

Do the council check the properties randomly or even if they have doubt they on their own by knoking the door....

Generally how do they identify & whats their interest

Any experiance on this kind of issue

Keith

Hallo,

My experience with this somewhat bureaucratic situation, is that although each dept (Planning/Building Control) may be located inside the same building and also within adjoining office accomodation, they might just as well be from Mars & Jupiter!

I've previously been involved in situations where a developer has successfully converted a residential house into 3 s/c flats and to a good standard, complete with prior `Full Plans' approval from Building Control. However, the developer omitted to apply for Town Planning consent. After letting the newly converted flats out, the Council Tax Collectors eventually discovered and queried the lack of information regarding `material change of use', when processing a housing benifit claim from one of the flat tenants.

This dilemma was eventually resolved by the local authority planning dept, which was reluctant to make the tenant homeless through an enforcement action and so subsequently granted planning permission for the 2 additional dwellings, on the basis of `continued use'!

Regards BS
spcplans@aol.com