Do I need planning permission?

Ancillary garden buildings including garages, sheds, outbuildings and greenhouses - any outbuilding in your garden so long as it is not used as a separate dwelling.

You will need planning permission if your property falls into any of these categories:

• your property is a flat, or is within a tenement or a four-in-a-block
• your house is within a conservation area or is within a listed building and the floor area of the building is greater than 4 square metres. (To check the conservation areas within South Lanarkshire please see our conservation areas page).
• any part of the building is in front of a wall forming part of the principal elevation or side elevation, where that elevation faces onto a road
• the eaves of the building are higher than three metres
• If the overall height of the building is higher than four metres
• any part of the building be within one metre of a boundary and be higher than 2.5 metres
• if the area of ground covered by development within the front or rear (including side) curtilage of the house (excluding the original house and any hard surface or decking) exceed 50% of the area of the front or rear curtilage respectively (again excluding the ground area of the original house and any hard surface or decking).

If your property doesn't come into any of the above categories then you do not need to apply for planning permission.

Garage conversions

Converting your garage to a room is normally ‘permitted development’ and does not need planning permission.  However, sometimes these permitted development rights to convert garages to living accommodation have been removed from houses, particularly in newer housing developments. So, it is important that you check with your local planning and building standards area office to see if you need planning permission before you decide to go ahead with your conversion.  If you do need to submit a planning application because your permitted development rights have been removed, there is no fee.

Where work is proposed to convert a garage that is attached to a listed building, then listed building consent may be required. Please check with our Planning and Building Standards office.

You will always need a building warrant to convert your garage to living accommodation.

If you need planning permission or listed building consent you can do this on the ePlanning Scotland website. If you live in a council house you should contact your local housing office.

See also: Definitions - curtilage, principal elevation and road.