A homeowner in Isleworth came to us after Hounslow Council ordered him to demolish the boundary wall he had built around his corner plot.
His house sits prominently on the junction of London Road — the busy A315 — and Beech Avenue, next door to a Royal Mail delivery office and opposite a large assisted living building. He had built a brick wall around the property: taller along the side boundary, where it encloses and protects the rear garden, and deliberately lower at the front, so that the house kept an open relationship with the street. The design matched the pillared wall at the attached neighbour’s house.
The council took against it. Its concerns came down to two things: the shade of the bricks, which it said did not match the original house closely enough, and the height of the front wall, which at 1.06 metres was six centimetres over the limit for permitted development. The enforcement notice required the front and side walls to be demolished in their entirety, with three months to comply. The council had initially objected to a new front porch as well, but that objection fell away, leaving the walls as the battleground.
We appealed on grounds (a) and (f): that planning permission should be granted for the walls, and that in any event demolishing the whole structure went far beyond what was needed to remedy the council’s complaints.
Our argument was that the walls had to be judged in their real context. This is not a quiet suburban close. It is a busy road carrying traffic to the M4, with large commercial buildings, a hotel enclosed by its own substantial forecourt wall, and a mix of boundary treatments of all shapes and heights. The lower front wall preserved views into the front garden and was in proportion with the house. The taller side wall stood directly opposite a timber fence of similar height. And the bricks were a near match — closer, in fact, than the varying shades already present across the semi-detached pair.
The inspector agreed on every point. She found that the front wall maintained an open frontage and did not appear dominant or incongruous; that the side wall had a comparable visual impact to the fence facing it; and that the contrast in brick colour was “not significant”. The development caused no harm to the character or appearance of the property or the area, and complied with the very policies the council had cited against it.
The appeal was allowed, the enforcement notice was quashed, and planning permission was granted for the walls as built. Our client kept every brick, and the demolition requirement disappeared entirely.
Hounslow runs one of the more persistent enforcement services in west London, but this case shows that persistence and correctness are not the same thing. When a notice demands total demolition over a brick shade and six centimetres, it is worth testing. You can read more about how the council approaches these cases, and what to do if you have received a notice yourself, in our guide to planning enforcement in Hounslow.
If you are facing enforcement action in Hounslow or anywhere else in England, please contact us for advice.
