A pensioner in Scotland has been left fuming after council bigwigs approved a 45-foot-tall dormer extension atop his neighbour’s home.
Derek Adams, 67, said his home on Paisley’s Glasgow Road had been “dwarfed” by the rooftop colossus which – though not yet completed – now looms over his garden.
Though the 67-year-old had attempted to stop Renfrewshire Council from approving the plans in 2021, the authority allowed his neighbours to erect a single-storey extension on the side of the home, as well as a dormer on its front and back.
Adams, a civil engineer who lives with his wife and daughter, said the extension was “effectively sitting on top of us” – and noted how the additional construction on the roof left the next-door bungalow as many as four metres taller than its original height.
Adams said he felt his neighbour’s home was “sitting on top of him”
Adams noted council guidelines which state that dormers like his neighbours’ must be “small and discreet” – and blasted the extension’s alleged non-compliance as “ridiculous”.
Though the pensioner was keen to stress his enmity lay not with his neighbours, with whom he’d discussed the extension – but with the council itself.
Adams, who has lived at the Glasgow Road address for almost 30 years, said that he had pored over council records after he realised the sheer size of the extension next door.
He discovered that after the original application had been approved in September 2022, the council then sanctioned a follow-up request from his neighbour for a non-material variation (NMV) – typically used for minor alterations which do not significantly change an original application.
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The in-progress additions to next door’s property have towered over Adams’s garden
Adams said: “What I realised was, between revision A [the original planning application] and revision B [the NMV] there was actually an increase in the length of the dormer.
“My understanding is that shouldn’t have been approved under an NMV request and we should have been notified specifically, but it was ignored. Nobody picked it up… The whole thing is a mess.”
He said that he had filed “umpteen” requests for council officials to visit his property and inspect next door’s extension – which have been refused.
Adams said: “They’ve certainly not come into my garden, and I offered… I told them: ‘Come out and I’ll point out where the errors are,’ and they haven’t come out.”
But the council have remained steadfast on their decision, calling the changes to the original design “sufficiently minor” to approve the request.
Renfrewshire Council have remained steadfast on their decision
A Renfrewshire Council spokesman said: “Our officers have visited the property and consider the development under way to be in accordance with the approved plans for the alterations to the house.
“The final design for the works was subject to a number of negotiated changes, which is often the case with applications for domestic properties.
“While the depth of the dormer has increased slightly under the NMV, it is minor in comparison to the dormer as a whole and does not raise any overshadowing or overlooking issues.
“Any request for an NMV is at the discretion of the planning authority and, in this case, we believe the changes to the original proposed design for the depth of the dormer were sufficiently minor to grant the request.”