Lawful Development Certificate in the City of London

Conservation areas and listed buildings in the City

The City has 28 conservation areas in a small area, and 637 list entries. A house inside a conservation area loses side extensions, cladding and rear extensions above one storey from the Order. A listed home needs listed building consent for most alterations, and a certificate cannot replace it.

There is also 1 Article 4 direction published by the council. We read its wording against your plans, as we would for any direction, because it removes only the rights it names.

Taken together, those layers can mean a City project needs an application rather than a certificate. Our planning drawings in the City of London are drawn for those cases.

The Barbican and estate homes

The council publishes the Barbican Estate Listed Building Management Guidelines: Volume I Introduction and Volume II Residential (SPD). It applies to the Barbican Estate, and it shows how the council manages change to homes with a protected character. For an estate flat, the question is not a certificate but whether listed building consent and planning permission are needed, and that is where the guidelines matter.

If you live in an estate home, send us your address. We check the listing, the flat status and the directions, and then tell you which route is open before you spend anything on drawings.

What a certificate can still do here

For a house that does qualify, the limits are the national ones. A rear extension is: 3 m (attached) / 4 m (detached) beyond the original rear wall, single storey. A loft uses a volume allowance: 40 m³ (terrace house) / 50 m³ (any other house) additional roof volume.

The council's fee is: Half the normal planning fee (householder: £274). It is paid to the City directly, and our fixed fee covers the survey, drawings and a second technologist's check.

What we check before we quote

Because the route is narrow, we ask for your address before anything else. From it we read the list entry, the conservation area and the direction, and we ask whether the building is a house or has been divided into flats.

The national rules for land in conservation areas are summarised like this: On article 2(3) land (conservation areas etc.): no side extensions, no cladding, no rear extension of more than one storey under Class A. We apply them to the plans exactly as they are written.

The government's own technical guidance for householders carries a warning that matters here: Householder PD technical guidance is dated September 2019, older than later amendments to the Order; the Order prevails. We therefore draw to the Order, and treat the guidance as a help rather than the rule.

If the answer is that no certificate is available, you hear that in our first reply, with the application route that fits your building instead.

Next steps and neighbouring boroughs

For the wider picture see architectural drawings in the City of London. Where a home needs another consent route, building regulations drawings in the City of London cover the construction side. Neighbouring councils are Islington and Tower Hamlets, and the national rules are on the Lawful Development Certificate page.