My neighbour is currently doing A&A and with the new front walls taking shape lately, I am surprised to find it is 1m more forward than mine which complied strictly to 7.5m setback requirement. I measured to confirm their front house setback is indeed 6.5m. 

Has this 7.5m setback being relaxed in recent years by BCA? I am tempted to extend out my front facades too for my coming reno to create more space but I don’t want to violate BCA regulations. 

Any advice? 

Nope. The rules had not been relaxed. 

However in certain estates, the setback is allowed to be less than 7.5m so as to maintain a same consistent setback with the neighbors. 

Also, since you mentioned that your neighbor is just doing A&A, chances are the existing house already has a front wall setback of 6.5m so they can just rebuild the wall based on what was the original setback distance. There is a rule under URA guidelines which allow for this but there are also conditions on when this can be applied. 

Of cos if the above 2 scenarios are not the case, you can always write in to URA to “feedback”. 

If you want to extend also can. Just follow saf rule no. 7. However the fine is quite substantial if you do get caught. 

Thanks Snooze for your advices.

My neighbour a few doors away had done a rather major A&A to the old building including hacking down the front wall and replacing with a new one. The old front wall definitely then had the same set back as mine, ie.7.5m. Hence I find it intriguing to see a visible reduction in the front set back.

One other question on the 1.8m height limit for the front boundary wall. Shld it be taken with respect to the street level or the building ground floor level? My ground floor is slightly elevated above the street with a ramp car porch but this was not captured well in the blue print which shows the ground floor to be at street level. I am planning to raise the height of the external front wall which is currently 1.8m from the street but much lower when measured from the building floor.

 

Edited July 4, 20188 yr by Newbee888

for the front setback, as I mentioned, it depends on where your house is location as in certain areas URA allow for less than 7.5m. of cos you can always write in to URA for clarification on why your neighbor can have a lesser setback  URA may "advise" your neighbor to shift the wall to 7.5m if they don't allow for lesser setback.

for boundary wall, technically it is with reference from street level. however in your house case, since your house is actually on an elevated plot, the stone marking wall is kind of a retaining wall so your boundary wall plus retaining wall height can be up to 2.8m. 

ie: if your retaining wall height is 0.5m, you can add another 1.8m of boundary wall on top of this retaining wall hence making the entire wall to be 2.3m high. if your retaining wall is 1.1m high, you can add only another 1.7m of boundary wall above.

basically boundary wall is limited to max of 1.8m in height. boundary wall plus retaining wall is limited to 2.8m in height.

 

Edited July 4, 20188 yr by snoozee