Daylight and sunlight report in Tower Hamlets

Dense streets, few houses

Only 12 per cent of households here live in a house or bungalow, and just 23.1 per cent own their home. Most of the neighbours who will read your application are renters in flats, and their rooms are often already thin on daylight, which leaves less margin before the BRE guideline is crossed.

Gardens barely register in the Greater London Authority's land-use survey, where they covered 7.4 per cent of the borough. Where there is no garden, a light well or a small yard serves as amenity space, and overshadowing of a yard of that size is a test worth running.

The council's High Density Living SPD sets expectations for living standards in the densest schemes, and the Central Area Good Growth guidance covers the wider core. Neither replaces the BRE tests, but they show officers accept that light in this borough is not what it is in the suburbs. A report that sets the figures against that context is fair to both sides.

When the neighbours are tenants, the way to keep a dispute from forming is to show each household what changes. We can supply a one-page view per affected window, with the existing and proposed sky visible from the glass, so a consultation letter can be answered with a picture rather than a defence.

Heritage and Article 4 in the borough

Tower Hamlets has 59 conservation areas and 64 Article 4 directions, and Historic England lists 916 entries, and 2 World Heritage Sites intersect the borough boundary. 39 places sit on the Heritage at Risk Register.

Many streets of Georgian and Victorian terraces are therefore protected, and extensions there are small and often confined to the rear. The result is a design in which every centimetre of height counts, both for the conservation officer and for the neighbour's window. Our survey records sill heights and glazing so the model matches the street.

How Tower Hamlets decides

The council decided 191 householder applications in the latest published year, granted 92.7 per cent, and decided 95.8 per cent on time. Those rates describe applications that arrived complete.

Smaller schemes were granted at 84.3 per cent across 427 decisions. For those the neighbours' light is routinely tested, and the application should arrive with the evidence. See also our planning drawings in Tower Hamlets, which are drawn from the same model as the report.

What the assessment includes

We survey the property, photograph the neighbours' elevations and build a three-dimensional model of the street. We run vertical sky component and daylight distribution at the affected windows, sunlight hours where orientation requires, and overshadowing of yards and gardens, before and after.

Each finding is explained in plain English. The BRE guide is advisory and London policy asks for flexibility, especially in dense locations, so we say where a shortfall may be acceptable given the existing conditions. A second chartered technologist checks the work before issue.

If a window fails, we test remedies on the model: a stepped section, a lower parapet, a shallower depth. You see the figures for each.

Cost and next step

The fee is fixed after a free constraints check, and depends on the windows to be tested and the site. Send the address and a sketch.

Our daylight and sunlight overview describes the method, and the architectural drawings page for Tower Hamlets lists our other work. Neighbouring boroughs differ: see Newham and Southwark.