Planning/Extension Question

Want to build a sunroom at the back of the house and a bedroon at the side. I know I need planning for the bedroom - fair enough.
The sunroom will be at the back of the house and so far as I can tell from the leaflets from the planning office (and from talking to 2 different people out there - who were not much help) I can build up to 40sqm without planning but any one extension can be only 20sqm. (combined floor area of extensions up to 40sqm max.(ca. 415sq/ft) in total.(Both rooms would total about 550sq/ft)

1. Info is confusing - does 40sqm refer only to building that does not need planning i.e at the back of the house, or to all extensions work carried out

2. Would anyone ever bother to look at the sunroom. I want roughly 25ft X 15ft which would be over the 20sqm( part of it would be an extension of the utility so it wouldn't be one room as such - could always say it was put onto the sunroom separately )


Maybe I have just been unlucky with the people I spoke to in the planning office but I was more confused after talking to them. Have seen some damn big extensions around so I assume the 40sqm only applies to exempted works - not needing planning, and anything requiring planning would be treated separately altogether

Any clarification would be appreciated - Cheers

Mate

Ring your local planner and ask him, they are straight up and can be helpful. No point guessing. Best of luck with it.

Hi,
I'm now confussed.
I'm looking into building an extension on our house of around 40 sq meters. Want to try and keep it under the need for planning limit.
But I was hoping to build it all in one go e.g. a 2 rooms ext to the back & side of the house.
Does anyone know if it's hard to get planning for extensions?
I'm now starting to think why limit myself to 40sq meters? If I'm going to go to all that trouble and cost why not build a 3 room ext, if planning isn't that hard to get??
I've a good bit of room at the back and side of the house so that should be no worries.
Plus one other question while I'm at it. Has anyone got a ball park figure for the cost of getting an extension in the Kildare area?

I'd say build as big as you can afford if you need planning anyway. You'll never want to live through another extension. Surely you may as well get permission for the whole build rather than trying to do the exempted part separately, as long as you don't think anyone has grounds to complain. I found it hard to get straight answers from planning authorities, get it in writing - I've had dfferent people give me different answers over the phone on major issues.

The regs state that the original house may be extended without permission by up to 40 sq. metres subject to compliance with the various conditions which most people are aware of. This is called exempted development.

However what most people are not aware of is that the 40 sq. metre exempted development limit includes the area of any previous extensions even if they had got permission.

2 examples of this would be - a house had a 22 sq. metres exempt extension built to the rear a couple of years ago so the maximum permissible exempted development size now would now be 22 sq. metres.

The other example would be that a house had a 25 sq. metre extension built to the side a few years and had obtained PP then the maximum exempted development limit would now be 15 sq. metres.

Basically the 40 sq. metres is an accumulation of the floor areas of all extensions regardless of whether they needed permission or not