Garden rooms to be exempt

Tuscany said:

According to Saturday’s Independent, the initiative is intended to apply more to rural areas and houses with plenty of space and is not intended to be widely used in built-up areas and urban estates. There would still need to be 25 square metres of free space remaining in the garden.

If that is the case, it would be disappointing in terms of a measure to create additional rental capacity. One has to ask what need the policy would be responding to and who is it designed to assist and benefit?

In terms of addressing the lack of rental accommodation, this initiative would be of little benefit. However, as the Indo article says “a lot of the rural TDs are delighted’’.

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I can understand this situation, for someone with a big site there would be limited impact on neighbours, parking etc.

However, I doubt the ESB would be giving a separate connection, I see it more as a non adjoining room for a family member who may already be living in the house.

I doubt it would qualify for rent a room scheme as that currently requires it to be part of the house and not an outhouse etc. Needs to be a door in-between.

I wouldn't like to see it go down the AirBnB route either.

misemoi said:

Also what will the knock on impact be on converted garages, granny flats etc? If i had one of these that is not exempt from planning for rental, I can't really see the difference and I would be demanding a review of this too.

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Neither of these are exempted for rentals and usually there is a condition in planning that once "Granny" has passed on the unit will be merged back into the home.

In practice this doesn't happen, but if the house gets sold the new buyer will get stick from their solicitor once they spot that there is a condition of prior planning that wasn't adhered to. Planning desk in the council will give you hassle also in any future PPs if they feel a condition was not met of a prior PP. (A former landlord of mine put in a PP a couple of years ago, and one of the reasons for refusal was non compliance with an older retention application that was successful - in fact that condition was compliant, but the applicant hadn't demonstrated it clearly in the new application).