Daylight and sunlight report in Richmond upon Thames

Houses with long gardens and a high bar for design

Richmond is a borough of houses: 59.8 per cent of households live in a house or bungalow, and 62.4 per cent own their home. The average home sells for 803,249 pounds, so owners invest heavily in extensions and neighbours scrutinise them just as carefully.

Domestic gardens made up 19.4 per cent of the borough's land in the Greater London Authority's survey, and the river, the parks and the villages give many streets a settled, low-rise character. The council's House Extensions and External Alterations SPD and its Residential Development Standards SPD expect extensions to remain subordinate to the house, which usually helps the light result too, since a subordinate roof is a lower roof.

Overshadowing of gardens is part of the same report. On a terrace of narrow plots, a deep rear extension on the south side can leave the neighbouring patio in shade for much of the spring, and the report shows that on the model.

Heritage in Richmond, a heavy constraint

The council publishes 85 conservation areas, and Historic England lists 819 entries, with 16 registered parks and gardens and 1 World Heritage Site.

Many Richmond homes sit in or near one of those protected settings. Officers in a conservation area focus on height, roof form and materials, and they treat a neighbour's complaint about light as a sign the form is too big. A report that shows the light is acceptable removes that line of objection, leaving the officer to judge character alone.

Where the house itself is listed, the design may have little flexibility. Then the daylight evidence has a different job: it shows that the existing form, with a modest addition, leaves neighbours with reasonable light, which is what the council asks of a harmless proposal.

How Richmond decides small applications

Richmond decided 1,302 householder applications in the latest published year, and granted 83.3 per cent. 98.3 per cent were decided within eight weeks or an agreed extension, so the council moves briskly.

Minor schemes were granted at 75.3 per cent across 324 decisions. A speedy council gives little time to catch up, so we recommend the report or screening note goes in with the application. Our planning drawings in Richmond upon Thames use the same model.

What the report covers

A measured survey of the house gives the base model, and photographs and public records give the neighbours' windows. We test vertical sky component at each affected window, daylight distribution in the rooms, sunlight hours where orientation requires, and overshadowing of gardens, for the existing building and the proposal.

The report sets out each figure and a plain-English reading of it. The BRE guide is advisory, and London guidance asks officers to apply it flexibly, so the report also says whether any shortfall is reasonable in the setting. A second chartered technologist checks the geometry and results before issue.

If a window does badly we test practical changes, for instance a lower eaves, a hipped side or a shallower depth, and show the gain in each.

Cost and next step

There is no list price: the fee is fixed after the free check and reflects the number of windows to be tested. Send us an address and a sketch.

The daylight and sunlight overview explains our method, and the architectural drawings page for Richmond upon Thames shows what else we draw in the borough. Other councils nearby ask for different things; see Sutton and Merton.