Hi everyone,

My neighbour recently had a wooden lean-to put up against the back of his house (think of a lean-to as a roof on struts and screwed into the wall of the house). During construction, the builders slowly added more and more to the structure so now it's on the verge of encroaching my land in my back garden. It looks silly, and at first I felt gutted but now I just feel embarrassed for my neighbour; it looks that bad. I was seriously considering moving out so I called an estate agent I've worked with before and when he came over, he suggested I look into a "Right to Light" easement.

I looked into this easement and I do have such an easement (mine and my neighbours houses are north/north-west-facing so I try and get as much natural light as possible into my sitting room which is at the back... Light which I now don't have, and an embarrassingly ugly structure that I can see every time I look out of my sitting room window. I called the council and they alerted the department that deals with planning permission of external constructs. Turns out my neighbour needed planning permission needed planning permission to put up this laughing stock. He applies and I appeal against it, both of us sending in letters (to state why X, Y, Z should happen) that are made public.

My neighbour completely lies about everything in his letter. He said I saw and signed off on numerous blueprints and even helped him at one point to remove a part of the structure that was on my land. My letter denies all of this and I even provided a screenshot of a text he sent me apologising for the wood being over my land, saying how bad it looked and that he was taking it down with a friend in about an hours time. So I wait until the planning process is over to see the result. I figured since I appealed against the application and even sent in a 2-page letter (which they have read), that my neighbour would have his permission denied and something would happen after that.

Well, as you can guess from the title, he got permission. The letter sent to me had no reason, just they took both letters into consideration and thanks for playing. So here I am, I want to appeal this decision. I don't just want to appeal for kicks, but because this is not how I've known the legal system to work and I wish to see a fair balance made of this.

If you read all of this, thank you. I figured I would write the bare minimum of the situation but it turns out it was a lengthy process.

TL;DR: Neighbour built a wooden lean-to, I brought it up with the council as being against my Right to Light and appealed their subsequent planning permission stuff, but it got approved anyway.

Note: The structure itself is over 10' which is what I understand is the maximum limit to how high these structures can be.