Housing extension for autistic child in Peterborough approved by council after plea from grandmother

A family with an autistic child has been granted permission to keep a housing extension built to accommodate his special needs.

The majority of Peterborough City Council’s (PCC) planning committee voted against officers’ recommendation to refuse the retrospective application at a meeting this week.

Council officers had cautioned that the extension leaves “little garden area for future occupiers” of 160 Northfield Road in Millfield.

But the four-year-old's family asked that their circumstances be taken into account.

Addressing the committee, his grandmother said the room will be “his safe place” where he can have “lights, colours, sounds, aromas and soft toys” to aid his relaxation and development.

She added that he “has the right to a good start and a happy life”, but that the family can’t afford anywhere larger.

The child, who is nonverbal, will soon have a sibling, she told the committee, on top of the five adults who already live together in the three-bedroom house.

Cllr Chris Harper (Peterborough First, Stanground South) was one of three councillors to vote in favour of officers’ recommendations to refuse the application.

He said that although the needs of the child are clear, there’s “no proof” the sensory room couldn’t be accommodated within the house, which had already had two extensions.

Cllr Brian Rush (Peterborough First, Stanground), who also voted in favour of officers’ recommendations, added that “people shouldn’t be able to go out and just build what they like”.

Officers had said that, aside from a doctor’s letter, “no further details or justification was provided” by the applicant as to why the room couldn’t be accommodated elsewhere in the house.

Cllr Wayne Fitzgerald (Conservatives, West) said that it’s a “failure of the council’s planning team or the wider council if we’re not advising people of the evidence they need to support their application from our own social care teams”.

Officers responded that the needs of the child weren't in question but rather the placement of the sensory room.

Cllr Fitzgerald said that future occupiers of the house could always knock the extension down if they don’t want it, while Cllr Mohammed Jamil (Labour, Central) said that the “needs of the child prevail”.

In the vote, seven went against officers’ recommendations and three in favour. There was one abstention.