Hackney’s planning enforcement team is one of the busiest in London. Over the past five years the Planning Inspectorate has decided 129 appeals against the council’s enforcement notices, among the largest caseloads of any London borough.
Nearly 1 in 4 of those notices was thrown out on legal grounds — problems with the way the notice itself was drafted — which is about three times the national rate. MOST Hackney notices do not survive in the form the council served them.
An enforcement notice is a formal legal notice saying the council believes something has been built or done at your property without planning permission, or in breach of a condition, and ordering you to put it right within a set period. You have a right of appeal to the Planning Inspectorate, which is independent of the council, and while the appeal is being decided the notice is put on hold.
Your appeal must reach the Planning Inspectorate before the date the notice takes effect, which is usually 28 days from the date it was issued, and a late appeal cannot be accepted.
Once the notice takes effect and the compliance period runs out, failing to do what it says is a criminal offence — and Hackney does prosecute. One Stoke Newington property owner was fined £40,000 for failing to remove an unauthorised roof extension.
So check the dates on your notice first, then send it to us. We will review it for free, tell you where you stand and quote a fixed fee for the work.
From complaint to enforcement notice
Cases begin with complaints, usually from neighbours, and in a borough as dense as Hackney the team is never short of them. The first contact is normally a letter or a visit from an enforcement officer.
You may also receive a Planning Contravention Notice — a formal questionnaire about the property, usually with 21 days to respond. Answer it carefully: what you say becomes the council’s evidence, and not responding is an offence in itself.
If the council decides a breach has happened and is worth pursuing, the enforcement notice follows. A notice can be challenged on seven legal grounds, and given how many Hackney notices fall on drafting defects, the legal grounds deserve particular attention here.
Part of the job is picking the right ones for your case; the wrong grounds can sink a good appeal.
It is also sometimes possible to persuade the council to withdraw a notice, though that is sometimes a long shot.
Where Hackney’s enforcement cases happen
Hackney’s caseload concentrates in three parts of the borough.
The first is Stamford Hill, which produces more enforcement appeals than anywhere else in the borough. The area’s large families need bigger homes, and the pressure for roof extensions, rear additions and basements has run ahead of what the planning system has been willing to allow — along with houses converted to schools and places of worship, not always with permission.
The council now has a planning framework written specifically for the area, the Stamford Hill Area Action Plan, with rules aimed at exactly these kinds of proposals.
The second is the borough’s Victorian terraces more widely — Clapton, Homerton, Stoke Newington, Dalston. Dormers and roof extensions beyond permitted development limits, rear extensions, unauthorised flat conversions and HMOs — Hackney has a borough-wide Article 4 direction, so even small HMO conversions need permission.
The borough’s 29 conservation areas cover much of this territory, and several carry their own directions removing householder permitted development rights. Plenty of owners discover that for the first time from an enforcement letter.
The third is commercial: Shoreditch, Hoxton and the Kingsland Road corridor. Extractor flues, unauthorised adverts, takeaways, changes of use, railway-arch businesses. The recent appeal list runs from Shoreditch High Street to a pizza takeaway on Kingsland Road, and a railway-arch business in London Fields recently won planning permission at appeal despite the council’s notice.
A recent Hackney case: saving a dormer roof extension
At 113A Green Lanes, near Newington Green, our client owned a flat above a restaurant. He had planning permission for roof extensions, but the dormers were built differently from the approved drawings, and the restaurant’s extract flue was extended upwards to clear his new windows.
Hackney served an enforcement notice requiring all of it to be removed — dormers and flue — with six months to strip the roof back.
We appealed the enforcement notice, but we also obtained a fresh planning permission for the roof alterations while the appeal was running, so that by the time the inspector visited, our client held an approved scheme he could lawfully build, and the dormers as built had to be judged against it.
The inspector found the differences “minimal”, noted a surrounding roofscape full of dormers and mansards, and quashed the notice as it related to the dormers, granting planning permission for them.
The flue was upheld — it was prominent, and there was no noise or odour evidence to defend it — but the roof itself, the expensive part, survived intact.
What to do first
Check the dates on the notice: when it was issued, when it takes effect, and the compliance period. Don’t ignore it — Hackney prosecutes owners who do, as the £40,000 fine shows. Gather every document about the property — permissions, drawings, photographs, dates — because Hackney notices fail most often on points of detail, and your own records are usually where the winning points are found. And take advice before responding to anything, including a Planning Contravention Notice or an officer at the door.
How we can help
We are specialists in enforcement notices. Our team are chartered town planners and former council officers, and we act on enforcement cases across London, including next door in Haringey. In Hackney we have beaten the council at appeal — the Green Lanes roof is still standing — and we know that this council’s notices, drafted at volume, repay careful legal scrutiny more than most.
If you have received an enforcement notice, a Planning Contravention Notice or any enforcement letter from Hackney Council, send it to us today. We will review it for free, give you a straight answer about your prospects, and quote a fixed fee for the work. The sooner we see the notice, the more options you will still have.
