skylights & rooflights in cadnam

Four things people believe about rooflights in the National Park

A park address brings extra attention to planning. It does not bring a ban.

Rumours about the National Park travel quickly in the villages around Cadnam. Some owners are told that nothing may be added to a roof inside the Park. Others are told that a rooflight never needs a second thought. Both claims go further than the rules do. Park land counts as Article 2(3) land, where some householder rights are taken away (dormer windows are the usual example), but rooflights under Class C are not removed in the same way. The usual conditions still apply, and the Authority has the powers a council has elsewhere to restrict them by direction.

The Authority can limit rooflights where an Article 4 direction applies or where a condition on an earlier permission took the right away. It also designates conservation areas that cover large parts of the Forest, and its records place Cadnam and Newbridge in one of them, with Copythorne and Bartley in another. A conservation area on its own does not remove rooflight rights, and where your own house falls is for the Authority's map to say, not the village name. A listed cottage is a separate question, since a new rooflight there needs consent from the listed building route in nearly every case.

Both beliefs skip the one step that matters, the address check. For the permitted development conditions themselves, the planning guide has the full list.

Many houses here were built after the war on generous plots, and their original permissions are worth reading. A condition attached to a bungalow built in the 1950s or 1960s can remove rights that a later neighbour kept, and reading the decision notice is the only check. The Authority's online register holds those documents for addresses within the Park.

If an application is needed, the Authority's planners tend to look at how a rooflight reads from the road or the common. A window on a rear slope behind a hedge is a quieter proposal than one on a front slope facing the lane, and a flush-fitting unit with a slim frame is easier to defend than a deep tinted one. These are judgements for the Authority, and we describe the options so that an application starts with sensible choices.

Three numbers that come up on most Forest roofs

Housing here is mostly single-storey or one-and-a-half storeys, so a few figures settle most choices.

Many homes around Cadnam, Copythorne and Bartley are bungalows and chalets standing on large plots among mature trees. A chalet bedroom needs a way out in a fire. A roof window of suitable size can serve as that escape window, when the storey served lies within 4.5 m of ground level. A second-floor room above a two-storey house is another case altogether and needs a protected stair instead.

Size is the second figure. A VELUX MK04 is 78 cm across and 98 cm tall, wide enough to open a bedroom up, though on rafters at ordinary centres it means trimming one. The kerb height for a flat rooflight on an extension is the third, because the maker sets a minimum above the finished covering and the fall has to be built in.

Shade is a local variable. Under oaks and pines a roof can stay dark and damp-looking, and moss and leaf litter gather around a flashing. A roof window that opens helps with ventilation in a room under a shaded slope, and a roof window is chosen with that in mind.

Each figure ties back to a measurement taken on the roof. The sill height comes from a tape inside the room, the window width from the rafter gap, and the kerb from the existing upstand or a new one we specify. Writing them on the survey sheet lets a builder, an architect or a building control surveyor read the same numbers we did.

Glazing is the one area where the energy label settles the choice. Both rooflights and roof windows carry a rating, and the unit that goes in must meet the figure set for its type. The energy efficient rooflights page shows how double and triple glazing compare, which matters in a house that is cold in winter because of its shade.

Two bungalows on the same road can need quite different jobs. One has a low pitch and a narrow rafter gap, the other a steep slope and wide centres, and the window that fits one will not fit the other.