An article was published in the Evening Standard today: "We've spent £100,000, say neighbours fighting basement development" The owner of a house in Strathmore Gardens achieved Planning Permission to construct a 2 storey basement 18 months ago. Strathmore Gardens is in RBKC and so it must be assumed that Planning Consent was acheived in accordance with their adopted Subterranean Development SPD. That neighbours objected is not unusual. What makes this case unusual is that the planning permission was overturned at judicial review on the basis that it would cause disruption and damage to their properties. By adoption of the Subterranean SPD, RBKC were the first Local Authority to adopt specific basement planning policies. However, increasingly, RBKC have been faced with a series of judicial review applications concerning basement developments for which they have granted planning consent. In April 2012 RBKC published a document titled 'Basement Extensions: Issues' which sets out the existing Council…

The government today announced a raft of changes to the planning laws with the intention of stimulating the construction industry. We are still trying to digest the impact of a number of these planning reforms - particularly relevant to many of our schemes and clients will be the changes to the requirement to provide affordable housing on larger schemes. We shall write a news article about this after the government has released the detail and the impact becomes clearer. We have had chance to consider the widely publicised changes to the domestic planning rules. The changes announced are, in effect, changes to the existing Permitted Development rules. Permitted Development is a part of the Town and Country Planning Act that allows certain limited development to take place without the need to obtain Planning Consent. Permitted Development rights are different in 'designated areas' - Conservation Areas, National Parks etc and they…