Residents group get together to protest against Hounslow Council’s ‘overbearing and unfair’ planning decisions

Image: Gunnersbury Park Garden estate

Planning decisions ‘inconsistent’ and prompted by complaints from a small group of ‘serial complainers’ on the Gunnersbury Park Garden estate

A group of residents on the Gunnersbury Park Garden estate have banded together to complain to Hounslow Council that they have been unfairly and inconsistently treated by the Council’s planning department when they have applied to make changes to their properties.

The estate, beside the north circular road, was laid out in the early 1920s as a garden suburb and is celebrating its centenary this year. It has a strong community ethos with an active residents’ association. Residents take pride in the appearance of the area. Last summer they took part in ‘Front Garden awards’ on the estate and the year before they successfully campaigned to stop Transport for London turning the overgrown wilderness of ‘Bat Corner’ into a car park for its staff.

READ ALSO: Winners of Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate ‘Front Garden Awards’ announced

READ ALSO: Transport for London staff car park at ‘Bat Corner’ turned down

But many of the residents have come up against opposition from the Council planning department when they have sought planning permission to improve their homes. They say the planners are being ‘overbearing’ and applying rules inconsistently, costing them and Hounslow taxpayers thousands of pounds quite unnecessarily.

Image: Gunnersbury Park Garden estate

“There doesn’t seem to be any sense or consistency with their planning decisions or enforcement, and it’s causing stress for a lot of people on the estate,” Claudia Hearne told The Chiswick Calendar.

They also claim that changes in what the planners require, demanded only after building work has already been done, are being driven by a handful of serial complainers on the estate.

In an unusual turn of events and a major breach of confidence, Council staff have been telling the affected residents the name of the main complainant, venting their frustration at the volume of complaints this individual has submitted. The residents have requested his name is not published here to avoid further escalation.

Case study one – Claudia and Nick Hearne

Claudia and Nick Hearne first put in for planning permission to improve their home four years ago. They wanted to extend their kitchen, which looks out onto their back garden, as many others on the estate have already done.

“We looked at what had been approved before,” Claudia told The Chiswick Calendar, “so as not to waste money and energy applying to make changes that would be turned down by the planning office.”

Because the estate is in a conservation area, kitchen extensions have not usually been permitted to have pitched rooves, they must be flat.

They put in an application for a flat roof accordingly and at the same time wanted glass doors across the full width of the house, opening onto the garden, as they had seen elsewhere on the estate. They were told part of the span had to have a wall with a window, rather than doors all the way across, but they were given the go-ahead to install the flat roof.

During the build, they discovered a minor discrepancy in the roof joins with the existing structure, sitting 15cm higher than originally planned.

“A planning officer assessed the site and assured us that as long as the extension remained within the approved height (2.6m), it would be fine,” Claudia told us.

They built to a height of 2.55m and received a letter from the planning office confirming the case was closed.

Image: Claudia and Nick’s kitchen

A barrage of complaints

It was only once they had finished the extension and moved into the property that someone living on the estate complained.

“That was just the start,” Claudia told us. He reported them for having a home office in their converted garage claiming this was against planning rules, and when that failed, they received a visit from the Tax Office. Both they and the planning office were satisfied they were using it appropriately.

He complained that they had replaced the pebble dash on the back wall of their house with painted render, despite the planning application clearly approving this. They reapplied for planning permission nonetheless, which this time was turned down by Hounslow Council, only for the planning inspectorate to find a year later that painted render finish was acceptable.

The same local resident complained that they had replaced their front door with a door of the same design using timber rather than UVPC.

“The Council admitted it was wasting their time, but even so they sent someone to look at it, which is all time and money.”

The same man went on to put in nine objections on a planning application the Hearnes submitted to relandscape their front garden. With support from ward councillor, Joanna Biddolph, he tried to persuade the Council that the proposal should be rejected. It was approved and went on to win two awards in the community’s ‘Front Garden Awards’.

Image: Claudia and Nick’s kitchen

A Hounslow Council employee told the Hearnes that the complainant had been taking photos and videos of her and her husband, as well as making a log of their comings and goings.

Claudia later discovered that Hounslow Council had inadvertently leaked her mobile phone number and email address.

“I’ve had calls from a withheld number coming in at all times of the night, with the caller heavy breathing down the receiver, clearly intended to intimidate me”.

The Information Commissioner’s Office ruled that the Council had breached data protection laws, prompting an apology.

Image: Gunnersbury Park Garden estate

Dozens of householders have had enforcement notices as the result of complaints from a handful of serial complainers locally

“It felt like a very personal attack on us,” said Claudia, “but we then found that there had been a spate of planning enforcement notices issued to other residents quite late on in the process. We were told that 12% of the houses on the estate had received them, which would be about 60 houses.

“There is a whole group of people who have been unfairly affected by over-the-top planning enforcement.”

They were told by a source at the Council that 60% of the complaints emanated from the same single complainant, who the source described as a ‘sadistic’ person with too much time on his hands who just liked to cause trouble for people. The remaining 40% of the complaints came from two other ‘regular’ complainants well known to the planning office.

The householders are now getting together as a group calling themselves the Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate Fair Planning Alliance. They want the Council to agree to a meeting with its head of planning and its conservation officer.

Their main issue is that the application of planning regulations is totally inconsistent. Planning officers say their plans are fine, so they go ahead and spend thousands of pounds on building work, only to find the officers change their minds when they receive a complaint from someone else on the estate.

Image: The back of Claudia and Nick’s house, showing the way in which the new kitchen roof has been joined to the existing one, which they have now been told to change 

Waiting to hear whether they will have to dismantle their kitchen extension

The investigation into their roof was reopened and the Hearnes were advised by the Council to submit a retrospective planning application. This time the planning office rejected it because of the way the new roof is attached to the existing one. They have told them to replace the roof, attaching it to the existing one at the very bottom of its slope, rather than the way they have it, which is 15cms higher.

“We have asked the planners why they have reopened the case when they have previously told us it was acceptable, but they just ignore the question.”

Image: The offending joint

They appealed the decision and lost, and were issued with an enforcement notice to take the roof down. They are now waiting for the result of a further appeal against the enforcement notice. If they lose the second appeal, they will have to take the roof down within three months.

Claudia has looked at similar extensions on the estate with roof joints similar to theirs, slightly higher than the existing eaves. She showed me 175 photographs showing joins that have been made in the way they have been told they must change. Since she collected the photographs, she has found even more.

Image: Some of the many photographs Claudia has collected showing other houses which have similar roof joins to the one she and Nick are being told to take down

Case study two – Gallo family

Patrizia Gallo and her family have also been told they have to take down the roof of their kitchen extension and redo it, because of the way they have joined the roof to the existing structure. They have also been told to replace the frames of the sliding doors to the garden, which are charcoal aluminium, with white pvc.

“You can’t see them from the back of the house. We have a wall at the bottom of the garden about two and a half metres high, so you would have to have a very intrusive way of looking at our house to see them. You would have to put a camera on a stick and lift it up to take a picture of the back of our house. It doesn’t disturb the conservation area because it’s not visible.

“I found it crazy. Aluminium is more sustainable; it keeps heat and cool better. £5,000 just for the three sliding doors. It will cost £15,000 to change the roof, and if we have to change it, the ceiling will be too low, my son will not be able to stand up straight in the kitchen.

“The thing I find so hard to take is that there are no consistent standards. Some people have done things against the planning regulations and not been prosecuted. What we have done has become the standard.”

Because the Council had received a complaint, Patrizia’s family had a visit from the Council’s officer.

“He inspected the property and said everything was fine; then we got the email.”

The Council officer who came to make the inspection told them the complainant was the same man who had made all the complaints about Claudia and Nick’s extension and that he was well known to them as a serial complainant.

Image: Close up of one of the other houses on the estate with a roof joint similar to that of Claudia and Patrizia’s, which has been passed by the planners

Case study three

Another resident who preferred to remain anonymous, has had complaints about the work she has had done, and so has her mother. She said:

‘We have done two recent extensions; one into the loft and the other a kitchen extension. We have now finished but during the works, we were reported to Hounslow Council, but both times they came round and didn’t find anything wrong.

‘My mother moved to my street a couple of years ago and was re-doing the extremely neglected front garden. She too was reported and when the man from the council came to have a look, he also didn’t find anything wrong.

‘I don’t really understand why some residents feel they need to complain about everything when the estate in general is a mishmash of varying extensions both loft and kitchen, even the ones after the estate was made into a conservation area.’

Cllr Biddolph blamed for supporting complaints

Claudia tried to take the case up with her local councillor but then discovered that she was involved in some of the objections.

“I went to the local councillors’ surgery on 1 June 2023 to seek advice and support from Joanna Biddolph but she refused to discuss the matter and told me, ‘I can’t talk to you about this’.”

It transpired that she herself had been involved in several of the complaints, including the position of the Hearnes’ satellite dish, which they had put on their roof, where it cannot be seen from the road, but can be seen from the upper story of the councillor’s own house, which is nearby.

The councillor’s involvement became public when Claudia raised it at the Chiswick Area Forum on Wednesday evening (12 March), the public meeting in which councillors report back to residents on matters relating to Chiswick.

When the Conservative Cllr Biddolph made a comment about the Labour council causing residents anxiety in the context of another matter, Claudia said:

“Councillor Biddolph, unfortunately I suffer from anxiety myself, which is being exasperated currently by the threat of prosecution from the Council’s planning enforcement team.

“They say that this is due to pressure from you to take action on minor planning infractions that aren’t visible to the public. Through a Freedom of Information request, I discovered that you have sent them photos of my home taken from your top floor bedroom window.

“Sadly it’s not just me – the council say 12% of our estate are affected by this campaign. I tried to discuss this issue with you at a surgery, but you refused to engage me in conversation. Don’t you think you should take accountability for the anxiety you are directly causing to me and other residents, your neighbours, by attacking us via the planning system?”

Cllr Biddolph replied:

“I did submit photos. That whole issue went to the Monitoring Officer [whose job is to ensure legal governance and conduct in local government] and the Monitoring Officer decided that it was not inappropriate. I understand that you’re upset and I’m very sorry that you are, but it has been through the legal due process.”

What the newly formed Gunnersbury Park Garden Estate (GPGE) Fair Planning Alliance wants now is to have a meeting with the Head of Planning at the Council and the Conservation officer as a group, to try and work out some sensible and consistent way forward.

Affected residents can join the GPGE Fair Planning Alliance by emailing gpge.fair.planning.alliance@outlook.com for support and information.

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