MadameT

Many thanks - all very helpful advice. [:)]

Bonjour a tous I'm new on here; hope someone can advise. We have an apartment on the 2nd (top) floor of a small (2006) new-build development. There are 5 apartments in all (2 on the top floor, 3 on the first floor), all of which are holiday homes and not lived in full-time (the other owners are all French; we are the only Brits).  The entire ground floor area except for the stairwell/bin store etc is owned by the local Mairie, and is used for occasional exhibitions, displays, local club events etc. All the apartment owners and the Mairie belong to a syndic which manages the cleaning/maintenance/insurance etc for the building.  We are on good terms with all our co-proprietaires, although inevitably our interaction with most of them is fairly limited as our paths don’t cross all that often. The rear, south-west facing  windows of our apartment look onto a rear courtyard/parking/access area which belongs to shops/restaurants on the adjacent street.  Above these commercial premises are several storeys of apartments whose rear windows also look out onto the courtyard. Two of the apartments on the first floor of our building have terraces which also face this courtyard. We have full-length sliding glass doors on the rear of our apartment, with a very small Juliet-type balcony outside, overlooking the much larger terrace of the flat below ours.  This balcony (more of a railing, really) is too small to be of any use and in fact is so narrow that we can’t even stand on it to clean the outside of our glass doors.  We would very much like to be able to replace this Juliet balcony/railing with a slightly larger, actual surface-mounted/cantilevered balcony – not very big, say, 1m x 2m max – both to access the exterior of our glass doors and (more importantly) to give us a small area to sit in the sun occasionally.   Obviously we would then overlook the terrace below to a slightly greater extent, and also - laterally, and to a similarly small extent – the adjoining terrace on the first floor.  Nothing would be visible from the front/street aspect. So, really, I would like to know whether or not we would be allowed to construct such a balcony, and if so what agreements/permissions would need to be obtained: obviously, from our immediate downstairs neighbours, and also, presumably, the agreement of the syndic as a whole.  Would we also require planning/building consent from the local authorities?