Flat conversion drawings in Southwark

A borough of flats, so houses are scarce

Only 21.8 per cent of Southwark's 130,818 households live in a house or bungalow. Owner-occupation is low too, at 28.9 per cent. Houses that could be converted are rare, and the size policy keeps the smaller ones as family homes.

Prices tell the same story. The average home sold for about £572,478, and the average flat for £469,796. Those two figures are close, so the financial case for splitting depends heavily on how much floor area each new flat achieves and on what you pay in levies.

Planning controls in the streets around you

Southwark publishes 480 Article 4 directions and 53 conservation areas. Between them, permitted development rights are withdrawn in many streets, and street-facing alterations can need permission even when the building itself is not listed. Historic England records 919 listed entries here, and 36 places are on the Heritage at Risk Register.

Trees are a quieter constraint. The council has published 724 tree preservation zones, and a protected street tree in front of your house can limit where a new shared entrance or bin store can go. We plot the trees at the constraints check.

There is a separate Article 4 direction for houses in multiple occupation. It does not stop self-contained flats, but it tells you the council reads subdivision closely. If you are weighing the two routes, compare our HMO conversion drawings in Southwark.

How Southwark decides schemes of fewer than ten homes

A flat conversion falls in the minor application class. Southwark decided 560 of them in the latest year of figures, granting 90.2 per cent and deciding 91.4 per cent on time. Householder applications fared better, at 94.8 per cent granted from 558 decisions.

These are borough-wide averages and include schemes that were never going to meet policy. A conversion that passes the size test and meets the space standard sits in a stronger position than the average, but we never promise a result.

Before submission we also check the council's online register for earlier decisions on your road: https://planning.southwark.gov.uk/online-applications/search.do?action=simple&searchType=Application. A refused conversion three doors down, or a granted one with its conditions, tells us more about the officer's approach than any average, and we reflect it in the design statement.

Levies and fees for new Southwark flats

Southwark falls in Mayoral levy band 2, an indexed £72.73 per square metre for permissions granted this year. The borough's own charge is zoned: £598/m² (Zone 1); £300/m² (Zone 2); £74/m² (Zone 3). Which zone your street falls in can swing the bill far more than the Mayoral rate.

Add the council fee of £610 per new dwelling, and the sound insulation required by Approved Document E: Separating walls 43 dB DnT,w+Ctr (min); floors and stairs 43 dB airborne (min), 64 dB L'nT,w impact (max) for dwellings formed by material change of use. We show the floor and wall build-ups on the building regulations drawings in Southwark.

The application itself uses our planning drawings in Southwark. Neighbouring boroughs are covered too: Lambeth, Lewisham and Tower Hamlets. The overview is at architectural drawings in Southwark.