A PORCH built to offer protection against burglars is being demolished.

Pendle Council made a decision to take down a porch at Patricia and George Owen’s Barnoldswick home after it was built without planning permission following a burglary last September. The porch was built to protect against a reoccurance.

After the porch was built, Pendle Council received a complaint from a neighbour about ‘unlawful’ building work in Taylor Street. A retrospective planning application was submitted to the council but this was rejected because the building work was not in keeping with the conservation area.

Despite the owners appeal against the decision, government planning inspector Katie McDonald made a final decision to knock down the porch saying it was “unsympathetically prominent” and would be “harmful to the character of the conservation area”.