Grounds for objecting to a development next door ?

MikeHar

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Hi,

I'm looking at buying a house with a smallish East-facing garden. About 1m over the back wall there is a single story commercial premises (looks like a warehouse). The house is near enough Dublin city centre and the site behind is quite large and I imagine very valuable so it wouldn't surprise me, given the demand for housing, if the site was sold in the next few years for development. Being able to sit in the sun is very important to me and an important consideration in choosing a house. So, if the site was sold and a developer wanted to build a block of flats 1m over my back wall I wouldn't want to live there anymore, the existing structure is low enough that it has no impact on the sunlight the garden recieves. So, I'm wondering what kind of weight would be given to an objection to a development based on the fact that it would block my sunlight ? Is there any rule-of-thumb ? Would this be considered completely irrelevant ? Or is it entirely at the whim of the official who assesses the objections ?

Thanks,
 
I would not take the chance either, I used to have a lovely sunny kitchen which was important to me until the house next door went up!
 
The right to light is an easement. It is a legal right and if you want to protect it, you need to talk to a solicitor.

Read this recent article from the [broken link removed].
 
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The right to light is an easement. It is a legal right and if you want to protect it, you need to talk to a solicitor.

Good point, and the chances of getting the owner of the other property to agree to something that would devalue their asset is close to nil.
 
The right to light is an easement. It is a legal right and if you want to protect it, you need to talk to a solicitor.

Read this recent article from the [broken link removed].

Very good article.

Remember that objections based on planning grounds are not always the same as objections based on other legal grounds.
 
If, as you say, being able to sit in the sun is important for you then I would second Thirsty's opinion - buy something else.
You won't get very much sunlight in an east-facing garden, unless you get there in the mornings before work.
You need south-facing to have sun during the day or west-facing to sit in the sun in the evenings.
 
The right to light only applies where somebody blocks all your light to a point you are in darkness and cant enjoy the property. Ie somebody building right up against the window of a house at a boundary. You could not claim that your right to light was taken by somebody building next to your garden as your garden is still getting light albeit maybe as not as much as you got before.
 
An east facing back garden will give you limited/nonexistent sun in the afternoon, early evening and late evening.

I wouldn’t buy it if you value sitting in your back garden.

Marion
 
An east facing back garden will give you limited/nonexistent sun in the afternoon, early evening and late evening.

You can use tools such as FindMyShadow to work out exactly how far shadows will extend from a structure at any location, over the course of the day & year.

For example, in the worst case of a house in the middle of a terrace with an 8m ridge height and east facing back gardens. At 3pm today, that will cast a shadow of a little over 6m from the ridge line, by 6pm that's just stretched beyond 21m, by 7pm, it's almost 38m!
 
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