Hi, usually a BTer but occassionally lurk on OT.
I need some advice on what to do about a local church which has put in plans for planning and development approval.
This church is 2 doors away from us but has a passage run down the edge of our garden and has a building at the end of our garden. Its approx a metre away from our boundary where we have a 7foot fence.
They have put in plans for extensive redevelopment, and one of the areas would be to knock down and rebuild this building larger, right upto our boundary - replacing the fence with a walled boundary. This is still to be single storey, which currently stands approx 12feet high, but ontop of this they wish to make a roof garden.
We are very concerned over this for several reasons - infringement of our privacy, blocking our natural light from 3pm till sunset, would be right upto our wildlife pond which worries us, AND most concerning is we have heard (through the grapevine so cannot be sure of its trueness) that this is to be the designated smoking area. Now we have a copy of the plans and through thorough studying of it we cannot find any other possible allocated smoking area so believe that this is most likely to be true. It will also be right upto 2 other peoples boundaries too. We have 2 young children and a dog to consider too.
We have just sent in our objections, stating all the above, plus some other issues re parking difficulties, and that they wish to use the church 24/7 so would be people coming and going next door to us at all hours, we recently had a group of people moving thigns out of the church at 11.30pm and they were shouting up and down the passage to each other and bashing about - [shamed] I ended up yelling out of the window to them to shut up! [shamed]
So is there anyone in the "know" about these things, we, two of our neighbours and at least 2 others have all submitted objections to the plans (these are just the ones I know of, there maybe more) how likely is it that they will be permitted permission? Our neighbour actually phoned up the building regs department to ask a few questions about the roof garden, to clarify where it would be. When told it would be upto her boundary, she replied "Oh, well we will be objecting to that too then" and she told me that the building regs officer replied "Well I wouldn't want it neither!"
It is really concerning me re the possible noise levels and mostly the smoking - air pollution and possible cigarette butts littering our garden.
I also don't want to be the ones standing in the way of redevelopment, the church does really need it in some ways but they seem to be going full on with it. We also plan to go to the public meeitng IF there is one.
TIA
