Out where the city meets the Downs
A garage in Brighton usually means you live some way from the seafront. The Regency squares and the Victorian terraces of Preston and Round Hill were laid out long before anyone needed one. The garages arrived with the suburbs that climbed the valleys between the wars and after.
The council's 2009 characterisation study traces them. Hangleton filled with private semis and bungalows in the 1930s and again in the 1950s, and the study notes that most private housing there has its own parking. Saltdean was laid out by an estate company founded in 1924, and its roads of bungalows were still selling plots into the 1970s. Withdean Estate West, agreed in 1938, was mostly built after the war, in the 1950s and 60s. Up at Mile Oak, later private building was largely bungalows, and Foredown is late twentieth-century cul-de-sac housing.
Those houses are where most conversions happen here. A bungalow with an attached garage is a good candidate for a bedroom on the level, which matters on a hillside street.
Picking the right conversion
Each one below has its own guide. This is how they tend to suit Brighton and Hove houses.
Integral. If your house has one, it was built long after the Victorian terraces. Ask the council for the original decision notice for your house in case a condition took away the right to convert.
Bedroom. The obvious use in a Saltdean or Hangleton bungalow where the family wants another room downstairs. If the room can only be reached through another one, plan an escape window from the start.
Single garage. On a sloping plot the garage floor is often lower than the hall. Get the step or the raised floor drawn before anything else.
Read our full guide: Single Garage Conversion: What Is Involved and What to Budget For →
Home office. Plenty of sense where the drive in front still takes the car. A desk needs less wall space than a bed, so a narrow garage works fine.
Utility or playroom. Converting the back half and keeping storage behind the old door leaves the front unchanged. On an Article 4 street that can save an application.
Detached. Most likely on the bigger plots, such as the large detached houses of Withdean. Kept as a workshop or study for the household, the Planning Portal says permission is typically not needed. Fitted out for someone to live in on their own, it becomes a change of use and needs an application.
Double garage. Usually found beside a larger detached house. Converting one bay and keeping the other for a car is the safer choice where street parking is tight.
Gym or studio. With a semi, the garage often backs onto next door's. A shared wall with an adjoining home needs sound insulation, and a drum kit needs far more.
Planning and building control. Two separate checks. Internal work rarely needs planning, but the front wall is outside work. Building Regulations approval is needed once the garage becomes a room you live in.
Cost and value. We don't quote figures. A level slab with a sound footing under the door costs far less than a stepped floor and a new foundation. Three quotes will show the spread.
When a new front window needs consent
Outside the protected areas, taking out a garage door and building a wall with a window in it is usually permitted, provided the materials look like the rest of the house. The Planning Portal does warn that this right is sometimes removed for garage conversions, especially on newer estates.
Brighton & Hove has more than 30 conservation areas, and there the national rules take cladding in stone, render, timber, plastic, pebble dash or tiles out of permitted development. A brick house can take a matching brick panel. Rendering the new panel on a rendered house is the step people get wrong.
Then the Article 4 streets. The Avenues direction in Hove applies to every property there, plus parts of Cliftonville and The Drive. It says replacement external doors and windows will usually need consent, and so will new hardstandings or changes to a front garden wall. The council treats plastic and aluminium replacements as generally unacceptable there. Round Hill and West Hill control doors and windows on fronts facing a road, and Patcham's direction takes in doors, windows, hard surfaces and boundaries. Across the conservation areas, the council's residents' guide says uPVC and aluminium doors and windows will not normally get permission on street frontages.
A listed house needs listed building consent on top.
Parking rules and the building control visit
The city's parking standards document, SPD14, has applied since October 2016. It sets the number of spaces new development should provide, not their size, and the council's consultation response said standard practice is to count a garage as a space. On a newer scheme, that is one reason a planning condition may keep the garage for parking. The original decision notice will say.
The resident permit terms allow one permit per eligible resident and exclude car-free properties. They say nothing about garages either way.
For the build itself, the council's Building Control team at Hove Town Hall handles approval unless you use a registered building control approver. The Planning Portal says the infill wall may need a new foundation. LABC adds that some door openings have no footing at all, and a lintel may then be agreed with the inspector. The new floor needs a membrane lapped into the damp course, then insulation to habitable standard.
One flood point. With no main rivers in the city, tidal risk sits mainly at Portslade-by-Sea and the Marina. If you live near either and want a downstairs bedroom, check the Environment Agency's flood map first.
Where these facts come from
- Garage conversion: planning permission (Planning Portal)
- Is Building Regulations approval needed for a garage conversion? (Planning Portal)
- Converting a garage into a workshop (Planning Portal)
- Converting a detached garage into self-contained living space (Planning Portal)
- Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015, Schedule 2
- Article 4 direction: The Avenues (Brighton & Hove)
- Brighton & Hove City Council: Article 4 directions
- Conservation areas residents' guide (Brighton & Hove, 2012)
- SPD14 Parking Standards (Brighton & Hove)
- Resident parking permit terms and conditions (Brighton & Hove)
- Urban Characterisation Study: Hangleton
- Urban Characterisation Study: Saltdean
- Urban Characterisation Study: Westdene and Withdean
- Urban Characterisation Study: Mile Oak and Portslade Village
- Brighton & Hove Level 1 and 2 Strategic Flood Risk Assessment (2018)
- Garage conversion tips from building control (LABC)
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Questions people in Brighton ask
We're on The Avenues in Hove and the garage door faces the street. Can we swap it for a window?
Not without consent. The Article 4 direction there covers replacing external doors and windows, and the council generally won't accept plastic or aluminium. Timber that matches the house stands a better chance.
Our 1930s semi in Hangleton is rendered. Can the new wall where the garage door was be rendered to match?
Outside a conservation area, matching render is normally fine because the materials look like the house. Inside one, the national rules exclude render cladding from permitted development, so ask the planners first.
Our Saltdean bungalow has an attached garage. Can it become a bedroom for an elderly parent?
Usually yes, as a room in the house, with Building Regulations approval and a safe way out in a fire. If the garage sits a step down, the floor can be built up to match the rest of the bungalow.
We live in a central permit zone. Will converting our garage affect our parking permit?
The council's permit terms don't mention garages. They limit permits to one per eligible resident and rule out car-free properties. If in doubt, ask the parking team in writing before work starts.