A home extension porch can be built under permitted development Rights but is it right for your property.

The planning rules for porches as a home extension are applicable to any external door to the dwelling-house.

This is usually for the traditional front door but it could also apply to a back door.

Adding a porch to any external door of your house is considered to be permitted development and not requiring an application for planning permission provided it meets certain dimensional constraints:

1 - the ground floor area (as measured externally) would not exceed three square metres (3M2).

2 - No part of the porch extension would be more than three metres (3M) above ground level.

3 - No part of the porch extension would be within two metres (2M) of any boundary of the dwelling-house and the highway.

This is NOT a large areas or height for a porch. These constraints are only for a very modest porch that may not be suitable as a workable design solution for your particular home.

Many homeowner like to have storage facilities for cloaks or a WC room. The 3M2 limit will not provide this. Similarly, if you require more of an entrance feature with a pitched roof for example the 3M height restriction wont cut it either.

Therefore, as with all home extensions, a porch extension to a dwelling house should always be design lead and if it needs Planning Permission then so be it.

If you decide to build without Planning Permission you won't have broken any laws - contrary to popular belief planning isn't a legal requirement, just a regulatory one.

Provided no one complains, then you may well get away with a bigger porch and if 4 years have lapsed then they cannot make you pull it down or apply for a retrospective approval. 

It very much depends upon your neighbours, if one of them decides to report your oversized porch extension to the council, then you could find yourself at the sharp end of enforcement action.

However, the very worst they can do is make you take it down, they can't fine you, or bring any sort of criminal action. The most probable outcome of building a porch extension to a dwelling house that's too big, and which subsequently gets reported, is for the planners to request a retrospective planning application, which costs the same as a normal application.

Unless the porch is an eyesore, or in a sensitive/conservation area then in most cases most people will not bat an eyelid.

Once the porch has been up for 4 years you can apply for a Lawful Development Certificate, which couldn't be reasonably withheld, and that would, in effect, give the porch retrospective planning permission, useful if you think that you might sell after this length of time.

Topics covered:-

• Porch Designs for a PD home extension
  
  Porch designs for a home extension