Daylight & Sunlight Birmingham
If you’re concerned about an impact on the light on your property in Birmingham, you have come to the right place. At Smith Marston, we proudly serve the Birmingham area in delivering daylight and sunlight assessments, and right-to-light surveys.
We can offer our services to homeowners, developers, architects and others to deliver accurate guidance and advice. Whether you’re concerned about a Bullring size expansion impeding your light or a development the size of Villa Park being built next door, we can help.
Daylight & Sunlight Surveyor Birmingham
Do you have a neighbouring development quickly growing taller and wider? Ensure your property has been considered in the planning stages with the help of our daylight and sunlight surveyors in Birmingham. We can advise on the impact of the daylight and sunlight reaching your property when the development is finished and what effect, if any, may occur.
What is a Daylight and Sunlight Assessment?
A daylight and sunlight assessment determines a potential impact on daylight, sunlight and overshadowing on a property caused by a neighbouring development or extension. It is a comprehensive document detailing these findings and may be used for planning purposes to determine how much daylight your proposed property plan will get or how much your development could impact other properties.
Most often, the Birmingham planning authority will request a daylight and sunlight report be completed prior to any work by a development commencing. Our team of daylight and sunlight surveyors in Birmingham have been approached by the developers and homeowners alike to deliver accurate guidance and advice.
Find out how we can assist you with issues relating to daylight and sunlight in Birmingham.
Right to Light Surveyor Birmingham
You can also choose our team at Smith Marston for expert right-to-light advice. We can deliver assessments and surveys of potential right to light injuries on your home or commercial property likely to be caused by neighbouring developments so that the best course of action can be taken regarding prevention or compensation. These assessments should ideally be carried out before the start of a development but as often is the case, we can also to assess once a build has commenced and as such can help navigate through changes to developments to avoid a right to light injury.
What is a Right to Light Assessment?
Our professional right to light surveyors in Birmingham can conduct a right to light assessment to determine the possible property injury risk. This document details the impact of light concerning the property’s legal rights. However, only some have a legal right to light. You will normally have a legal right to light if you have enjoyed uninterrupted daylight through a window/glazed door aperture in a property for 20+ years. New build properties may also potentially have rights acquired an express or implied grant.
A right to light injury occurs if less than 50% to 55% of your rooms area (at desk height) can no longer see 0.2% of the sky. Unlike the daylight and sunlight technical document, it applies to every area of the house, not just habitable rooms. It can be caused by a new property development or even a modest extension on a neighbouring property.
Do I Need a Right to Light Assessment?
The legal right to light is a specialist area. It is not widely known about by many architects, surveyors and planning professionals. For this reason, you may have a neighbouring development be granted planning permission despite your reservations about the impact on your property. If you’re concerned about a loss of light to your property, it is time to get a right to light assessment. The earlier, the better, as a detected right to light injury could prevent the build of the approved scheme by use of an injunction, should your case be strong enough.
Unless explicitly communicated, do not assume a right to light assessment has already been conducted. Arrange for your own survey to take place, in which you will receive a report of the findings that you can raise with the relevant developer.
Learn more about how our team of right to light surveyors in Birmingham can help you.
Choose Smith Marston for Daylight & Sunlight or Right to Light in Birmingham
Protect your property in Birmingham with the help of our expert team. At Smith Marston, we can assist you with issues relating to daylight and sunlight, a legal right to light and boundary disputes. Whether you’re a homeowner or developer, we can offer our guidance to all to ensure all concerns and disputes are handled fairly and accurately.
Get in touch with our team today to find out how we can help you in Birmingham.
How we can help
At Smith Marston, we are able to carry out the 3D AutoCad modelling and undertake the complex calculations to make an assessment of the right to light issues using sophisticated computer software.
We can advise neighbours to a development, whose right to light may be affected, or developers to assess the risk of right to light issues with neighbours.
Although we are based in the north of England, we have had projects throughout the whole of England and Wales. In Scotland, prescriptive rights of light do not exist but we have provided numerous BRE Daylight and Sunlight reports for developments in Scotland and we have also been to Gibraltar to provide specialist rights of light advice to the Gibraltarian Government.
