Plan to raise garage roof by just 1m falls foul of Birmingham planners

Birmingham council has blocked plans by an award winning architect for a £50,000 house extension because it involved raising the roof of a garage by 1m.

Apec Architects was asked to add a third bedroom to the house in the Moseley area of the city last year.

But last week planners told the conservation specialist that its design to put the extra bedroom over an existing garage was “out of keeping with the existing house” which is in a local conservation area.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” director Ken Fisher, who joined the practice back in 1973, told BD. “We’ve raised the garage roof by 1m. I can’t see how it will be detrimental to the area. It’s bonkers.

“It just worries me that if planners are supposed to be encouraging development, then decisions like this are just doing the reverse. I’m gobsmacked. David Cameron is saying we need to get planning issues sorted and this happens. This is an innocuous little scheme. It’s barmy.”

Apec Architects' house extension

The existing house and garage (top) and how the extension to the garage would have looked (bottom)

Fisher was told by Waheed Nazir, the council’s director of planning and regeneration, that “the design of the proposed extension would be out of keeping with the design/character/appearance of the existing house”.

Nazir added: “The site is within the St Agnes Conservation Area and the proposed development would be incompatible with the character and appearance of that area.” Fisher said his client was set to appeal the decision and estimated the firm had racked up £3,000 in fees.

In its design and access statement, Apec said: “By raising the roof by just 1.1m, it is felt this modest increase in height of the existing garage would not have a significant effect on the perceived space between the properties and not, therefore, detrimental to the character of the conservation area.”

Apec’s scheme to preserve a medieval merchant’s house in Kings Norton, just outside Birmingham, was the overall winner of BBC2’s Restoration series back in 2004. Other schemes it has worked on include Sheffield and Wakefield cathedrals as well as St Martin’s in the Bull Ring under the wider redevelopment of the retail centre.

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