Construction drawings in Lewisham

Article 4 directions and listed buildings in Lewisham

Lewisham has 57 Article 4 directions, plus 30 conservation areas and 367 list entries. The directions are numerous but cover a modest number of mapped areas, 89 in all, so some streets have special rules and the next street does not.

Where a direction removes a permitted right, the materials on the facing elevation become a matter for the council. The sheets name the brick, the window profile and the roof finish for those houses. The energy line they have to meet is: New elements in existing dwellings, limiting U-values W/(m²·K): roof 0.15, wall 0.18, floor 0.18, windows 1.4 (or WER Band B), doors 1.4.

Heritage data also records 1 World Heritage Site touching the borough, a reminder that settings can carry weight. If your scheme is near anything like that, planning drawings in Lewisham deal with the scheme and the construction set follows.

Stairs and escape in a Lewisham loft or rear addition

Terraced Lewisham houses often have narrow stairs that were fine for their period. A loft conversion forces a decision. The figure building control checks is Private stair: rise 150-220 mm, going 220-300 mm, max pitch 42°, 2R+G 550-700 mm, and a staircase that suits the existing house rarely fits it without moving the landing below.

We draw the existing stair and the proposed one together in section. Headroom is read as 2.0 m clear headroom over stairs, and the section shows where the roof pitch gives or takes it.

A sheet for ventilation completes the picture: Intermittent extract: kitchen 30 l/s with cooker hood (60 l/s otherwise), utility 30 l/s, bathroom 15 l/s, WC 6 l/s. These numbers go into the fan schedule, so the electrician does not guess.

Planning pace and why the technical set waits for nothing

Lewisham decided 578 householder applications in its latest published year, granted 89.4 per cent and decided 95.2 per cent in time. A large rear extension is often handled differently, and the published count of such prior approval notifications refused is 46, against 2 granted.

Those numbers help you plan the sequence, nothing more. The technical set can be started once the layout is stable, so a builder is ready the week the decision lands. Before then we use the time on the dull but costly parts: where each service runs, what the floor build-up is, and which walls are load-bearing once the survey is open to view.

Fees, checks and neighbouring boroughs

We quote a fixed fee after a free constraints check, and a second chartered technologist checks every sheet. The set can be passed straight to building control as building regulations drawings in Lewisham, and the engineer's design is covered by structural calculations in Lewisham. See also architectural drawings in Lewisham, or the same service in Greenwich and Bromley.