You may be interested to hear of planning issues that have arisen after the construction of a garden in Brighton. The planning department were contacted by a disgruntled neighbour, who was unhappy about the terraces and swimming pool that were built in the new garden. Planning permission has recently changed as far as swimming pools are concerned, so always check your boundary distance before planning a pool now. We built this pool before the change in planning, but have still had to apply for retrospective planning. Also, did you know that you cannot replace more than 20% of  a lawn (in a back garden - this has nothing to do with the new front driveway legislation) with hard landscaping without planning permission? We often take up lawns and replace with hard landscaped areas, and this will certainly affect many of us in the future. Also, any terrace or structure that is built in the back garden that is more than 30cm above the existing ground level also needs planning permission.

I think our project will be okay. We just replaced existing terraces with new, using different materials but the same levels. However, the planning department would not take photographic evidence from the client that the existing terraces were there already! Luckily I had taken an initial level survey and then had drawings showing finished levels and these clearly showed that the levels hadn't changed. Without these, the client would have been told to remove the entire terrace.

I would just say, be careful! You may think that your designs for a garden are all very straightforward, but for any large projects including new terraces, changes in levels and changes in lawn areas, contact the planning department first for their overview of the drawings. It could save a lot of heartache in the future.

Louisa Bell from City and Country Gardens.