Don’t worry! You won’t wake up to find a bulldozer in your garden. A grant of planning permission cannot override your property rights. In fact in planning law, land ownership and associated property rights are classed as ‘non-material considerations’, which means that your local planning committee cannot take them into account when considering the planning application.However anyone applying for planning permission is required to complete a form providing ownership details for the land in question. This is to ensure that landowners are informed of planning applications affecting their land.
As the properties are, in this case, leasehold, it is important that anyone thinking of extending their home, first looks at their lease, as there will always be restrictions on what alterations or additions can be carried our. Generally, residential leasehold ownership only extends to the interior of the flat and not to any part of the structure or exterior of the building.
It would seem to me that the only way in which a development of this type could be carried out would be if all the owners and the ground landlord clubbed together to make it happen. Not forgetting the mortgage lenders. So on balance, I don’t think it’s gonna happen.
BRUCE AND HOLLY 