A disabled grandmother who wants to extend her house for health reasons has become embroiled in a planning dispute with the local authority.
Councillors have called for Bristol City Council to take a “humane” approach to its protracted dispute with Mrs Zafar, who wants to adapt her Easton home so she can remain there and receive the care she needs.
The elderly woman, who has multiple health conditions and is being looked after by her sons, says the situation has left her homeless and penniless and caused her health to deteriorate.
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The council ordered Mrs Zafar to demolish two extensions being built at the back of her two-storey terrace house on Milsom Street, saying they are both unauthorised.
But she has appealed the planning enforcement notice served by the council, and submitted retrospective planning applications for the works behind her end-of-terrace home.
Council officers have recommended that councillors reject both applications due to their “unacceptable and “unsympathetic” design and “unacceptable” implications for occupants and neighbours.
But furious family members have accused officers of producing a “highly misleading and inaccurate” planning report, and of siding with a planning inspector who said an extension was of limited benefit because Mrs Zafar would not live forever.
Mrs Zafar has applied to build a two-storey rear extension - with a downstairs bathroom, medical equipment storage area, walk-in wet room and fire escape - to replace the single-storey rear extension already knocked down by builders after it fell into disrepair.
She attempted to get consent for the 6.5m-high, 4.5m-long, two-storey extension last year, but her application was rejected by the council in a decision that was upheld by a planning inspector at appeal.
Mrs Zafar has also applied to build a one-storey extension onto the back of the two-storey extension, but she wants to build it 0.8m higher than allowed under permitted development rights.
She gained prior approval for the extra rear extension in 2019, but permitted development rules required it to be no longer than 6m and no higher than 4m.
An enforcement officer told the planning meeting that the extension which Mrs Zafar had started to build was bigger than this and that the work began after the prior approval expired.
“Our contention is that none of the extension to the rear has any form of planning permission,” he said. “Essentially... both applications are for two-storey rear extensions to the rear. [They] are, if you like, the applicant’s attempt to get a second opinion.”
Mrs Zafar pleaded with councillors to approve her applications, saying she wants to stay in the home where she raised her children and has the support of the whole community, except her new next-door neighbour.
In a statement to the committee meeting on July 21, she wrote: “All of this has made me sicker and sicker. I have been homeless nearly two years because of this in a pandemic, yet still have had to pay utility charges and taxes for my home.
“I want to stay in my community and my own home and have a semblance of quality of life by way of these proposals. I have lost my life savings for this to get a better quality of life, please do not let that go to waste.”
Bristol West MP Thangam Debbonnaire wrote in support of Mrs Zafar, saying the protracted dispute had taken a “significant” toll on her mental and physical health.
Ms Debbonnaire asked the council to consider the case with “care and compassion” and to take no more planning enforcement action against her.
WECIL, a charity for disabled people in the South West, called on councillors to consider the “social model of disability” when making their decision and “remove the systemic barriers, derogatory attitudes, and social exclusion, which stop individuals with impairments from functioning in society”.
Oliver Matthews, who lives next door to Mrs Zafar, lodged the only objection to both applications, which were referred to the committee by Lawrence Hill councillors Yassin Mohamud and Hibaq Jama.
Cllr Jama, who lent her support to Mrs Zafar, said the facts were “heavily contested” so she wanted councillors rather than officers to decide the case.
Four members of the public sent more than 100 pages of written submissions in support of the elderly woman’s applications, arguing that the council had not taken equality considerations into account and had wrongly concluded that the extensions would be “overbearing” and cast a shadow on neighbouring homes.
A planning officer told councillors the two-storey extension would cause “unacceptable” overbearing, overlooking and overshadowing, and, together with the extra one-storey extension would be “visually unsympathetic” and make the back garden unacceptably small.
He said he had not undertaken an equalities assessment, but Mrs Zafar’s medical circumstances were considered by the planning inspector who dismissed her previous appeal.
In his conclusion, the inspector wrote: “I have no doubt that the proposals will benefit the appellant in respect of providing expanded accommodation and this does carry some weight.
“However, the development would be likely to remain after the appellant’s personal circumstances have ceased to exist, and this matter does not outweigh the [planning] harm.”
One outraged member of the public wrote to councillors saying: “If this is supported at committee, you are effectively setting a precedent that, hey, if you're disabled and need a development for your needs, tough luck as we don't care because you will die one day, maybe not now, or decades away you will die one day.”
Councillors voted to defer their decision so they could visit the site to get a better understanding of the issues, given the stakes involved and the “clear vulnerability” of Mrs Zafar.
They also wanted to give her the chance to revise her application so complies with planning policy.
Officers assured members they had “tried to come up with a common sense approach to what is a maximum-type build” but the applicant had not shown any “willingness” to budge.
Six of the nine-strong committee voted in favour of the deferral. Two members voted against it and one abstained.
Conservative councillor Chris Windows said: “My worry is that by doing anything other than supporting the officer’s recommendation we’re sending a message out and it could be a dangerous message.”
Labour councillor Fabian Breckels, who proposed the deferral, said: “The planning inspectorate threw this out, but we need to get the balance right.
“We need to be humane as a council.
“I know relations are clearly strained between the [council] and the applicant, but we need to find some way forward.”
