'Huge home extensions ripping guts out of area'

Oversized extensions are devastating Castle Bromwich's character, a councillor says

Residents are being driven to tears by oversized home extensions that rip the guts out of a community, a councillor has claimed.

Alan Feeney has appealed for planning applications to be put on hold for a review "before Solihull becomes another faceless, soulless extension of Birmingham".

The councillor for Castle Bromwich made a formal deputation during Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council's climate change and planning decision session on Tuesday.

In response, the authority's head of planning said each application would be determined on its merits.

"Residents come to me in tears because they feel powerless to stop the area they have lived in all their lives having the guts ripped out of it," Feeney told the meeting.

"We are seeing three-bedroom homes turned into five-, six-, seven-bedroom homes.

"We see a hodgepodge of roof lines, a patchwork quilt of materials – overall a jumble sale of developments not future proof."

He said the authority's guidelines on home extensions were 15-years-old and permitted development rights were being "manipulated by unscrupulous developers".

"We are finding ourselves inundated with retrospective developments by those who know they only have to wait the council out, essentially holding a staring contest with us to see who will give up first," he added.

Head of planning Mark Andrews said he understood Feeney's concerns and added there had been "a step change" in lost appeal decisions in recent months.

He said the department had looked at updating household extension guidance and allowed appeals had to be treated as "a material consideration in planning applications, especially where we have similar applications that come forward".

But the officer urged caution on a moratorium on applications.

"That could be quite a difficult route to explore and go down," he said.

"Certainly we are happy to take a look at the timetable for reviewing the guidelines."

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.