Daylight and sunlight report in Hackney

Terraces, flats and the light between them

Hackney is a borough of flats and converted terraces. Only 18.8 per cent of households live in a house or bungalow, and 24.6 per cent own their home. In practice that means a typical Hackney scheme sits against a neighbour who is either a flat owner with a single rear window or a tenant in a lower-ground flat, rather than a family in a semi.

Back additions are the common case. Victorian terraces here often have a rear outrigger already, and the new side-return infill or upward extension lands in the shadow of that outrigger. The neighbour's window, set low and close to the boundary, has very little spare light to lose. Our checks therefore focus on those low windows, where a small change in wall height shifts the result most.

If the house is divided into flats, the report has a second job. Habitable rooms in the new layout must themselves receive adequate light, and the council's mention of overheating means a deep, north-facing lower floor will be questioned. We model both directions of effect in one pass.

Conservation areas and listed buildings in the same file

Light is rarely the only constraint on a Hackney street. The council publishes 37 conservation areas and 77 Article 4 directions, and Historic England lists 555 entries inside the boundary. A scheme that has to respect a historic roofline often cannot simply be lowered to rescue the neighbour's light, so the design and the report have to be worked out together.

Where a heritage constraint fixes the height, the report becomes the argument. It shows the loss against the guide's guidelines, explains why the context makes it reasonable, and compares the alternatives we tested. Officers respond well to a record that shows the options were weighed, not one that presents a single scheme as unavoidable.

How Hackney decides householder and minor schemes

Hackney made 415 householder decisions in the latest published year and granted 84.6 per cent of them, with 91.3 per cent decided in time. Minor schemes, which include small new homes and conversions, ran at 81.6 per cent granted across 689 decisions.

Those are borough-wide averages, not forecasts for your address, and they say nothing about how many of those cases carried a light report. We use them for planning the timetable only. A report prepared before submission removes one common reason for a validation delay, since the checklist item is already answered.

Where the report sits among your other documents

The study is usually one part of a wider pack. The council's Residential extensions and alterations SPD is the design reference for the drawings, and our planning drawings in Hackney are modelled so the same 3D model feeds the light analysis. If the house is below ground in part, the basement impact assessment in Hackney deals with the separate ground and water questions.

If you are unsure whether a report is worth commissioning, start with the general guide at daylight and sunlight reports or the borough overview at architectural drawings in Hackney. Neighbouring boroughs apply their own lists, so a project near the boundary is worth comparing with Islington or Tower Hamlets.

What the first conversation looks like

Most Hackney clients send us a rough sketch and two or three photographs of the rear of the house and the neighbouring windows. From those we can usually tell whether the design looks likely to disturb a neighbour, and whether a full study, a short geometric sheet or nothing at all is the right response. If a survey is needed, we measure the neighbours' openings from your side of the boundary and from any public vantage point, so you are not left to approach them yourself.

Cost and what to send us

There is no list price, because the work depends on how many neighbouring windows need testing. Send the address and a sketch and we give a quote that stays fixed once agreed, after a no-charge look at the constraints. A second chartered technologist checks the model and the results before anything is issued.