Planning & Design Services in London

Planning and Design Services

Before anything is built, two separate approvals usually come into it. Planning permission is about what the building looks like and how it affects the street and the neighbours. Building regulations are about how it’s built: structure, fire safety, insulation, drainage. A design has to pass both, and they’re handled by different departments, often at different times.

The starting point is in the Town and Country Planning Act:

“Subject to the following provisions of this section, planning permission is required for the carrying out of any development of land.”

Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 57(1)

“Development” covers most building work and changes of use. Many rear extensions and loft dormers are already granted permission nationally under permitted development, so no application is needed. Flats, listed buildings and properties with permitted development rights removed don’t get that.

Proving you don’t need permission

Permitted development has limits on size, height and materials. When a project sits inside them, a Lawful Development Certificate confirms it in writing. The Act describes it like this:

“If any person wishes to ascertain whether— (a) any proposed use of buildings or other land; or (b) any operations proposed to be carried out in, on, over or under land, would be lawful, he may make an application for the purpose to the local planning authority specifying the land and describing the use or operations in question.”

Town and Country Planning Act 1990, section 192(1)

It isn’t compulsory, but buyers’ solicitors usually ask for one when the house is sold. Councils typically take around eight weeks to decide.

Conservation areas

A large part of inner London is in a conservation area. There, permitted development is reduced, and design gets more scrutiny. The council is under a legal duty when it decides:

“In the exercise, with respect to any buildings or other land in a conservation area, of any functions under or by virtue of any of the provisions mentioned in subsection (2), special attention shall be paid to the desirability of preserving or enhancing the character or appearance of that area.”

Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, section 72(1)

In practice that means matching brick, timber sash windows instead of uPVC, and keeping changes to the front of the house small. Many boroughs publish a conservation area appraisal, and reading it before the design starts saves a refusal.

Drawings and structure

A typical project goes through three sets of drawings. First the measured survey of the existing house. Then planning drawings, showing the outside and the layout. Then building regulations drawings, with construction details and the structural engineer’s calculations for beams, foundations and any steel.

The engineer’s input matters early in London. Clay soil shrinks and swells with the seasons, and trees nearby make it worse, so foundations are often deeper than people expect. Removing a wall between two rooms, or building over a public sewer, both change the design and sometimes the cost.

Some history

Modern planning control began with the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, which came into force on 1 July 1948. That’s why “original house” in permitted development rules means the house as it stood on that date. National building regulations came later, in 1965. Inner London kept its own London Building Acts until 1986, a system that went back to the rules written after the Great Fire of 1666.

How design ties in with the build

The cost of a project is fixed mostly at the drawing stage. A wider opening, a bigger rooflight or a bathroom moved away from the soil stack all look minor on paper, but add steel, drainage work or time on site. When the people pricing the build see the drawings early, those choices can be made with the cost known. More on choosing who draws the plans is in the planning architect guide, and the stage after drawings is covered on the pre-construction page.

Force Builders provides planning, design and structural coordination for extensions, loft conversions and refurbishments in Kensington, Knightsbridge, Wimbledon, Richmond, Archway, Finchley, Fulham, Notting Hill, Holland Park and Putney.