If there is one type of householder developments that case officer and councils seem to hate, it is roof terraces. All of our planning consultants were once council case officers and we remember being told to refuse roof terraces – they look bad, overlook the surrounding neighbours and cause noise and disturbance (or so we were told).
But roof terraces really improve quality of life. Small, upper floor flats don’t otherwise have any outside space.
Jake Carlow had a large area of flat roof just outside of his bedroom window. He applied to London Borough of Lambeth to install planters around the roof and to install a door so that it could be used as an outside terrace. He didn’t expect to be refused – the planters would stop him overlooking any neighbours and he could see a few other roof terraces on other flats nearby. We appealed successfully on his behalf, pointing out that he would not be able to overlook his neighbours and that they would suffer no loss of privacy.
