A woman has succeeded in obtaining the right to continue living in an annexe next to her son’s house.
The annexe was situated on a farm the woman owned and had originally been a stable block. When planning permission to convert it into an annexe was granted in 2011, a condition attached to the permission stated that it had to remain ancillary to her son’s house.
She later applied for a certificate of lawful development. While she accepted that she had breached the planning permission by living in the annexe, she contended that the four-year time limit for taking enforcement action had passed and the breach could therefore be deemed lawful. However, her son claimed that she lived in a nearby village and had plans to sell the annexe and the land around it. He said that the longest continuous period during which she had lived in the annexe was only eight months, between December 2021 and September 2022.
The woman had made a statutory declaration that she had moved into the annexe in December 2019. A planning officer noted that her son had not made an affidavit in support of his claims, and a neighbour’s evidence that no one had lived at the property other than for odd months could not be corroborated as the neighbour had not provided an address. The local authority therefore had no evidence to contradict the statutory declaration and the evidence the woman had provided.
The planning officer’s report confirmed that the gardens of the the house and the annexe were separated by a fence and that they had separate parking areas. The annexe had its own water and electricity connection, and the two properties paid separate council tax and were under separate legal ownership. Granting the certificate of lawful development, the planning officer concluded, on the balance of probabilities, that the annexe had been continually occupied for at least four years as a separate dwelling.
