Lawful Development Certificate in Hounslow

Houses, flats and rented homes

Only 54 per cent of Hounslow households live in a house or bungalow, and 45.7 per cent own their home. Many of the rest live in flats, and householder rights do not run to flats: Householder permitted development (Sch 2 Part 1) does not apply to flats or buildings containing flats. If you own a maisonette or a flat above a shop, a certificate for an extension is the wrong tool. We tell you at the first check and suggest a planning application.

Houses are where a certificate earns its fee. The single-storey rear allowance reads: 3 m (attached) / 4 m (detached) beyond the original rear wall, single storey, with a loft allowance of 40 m³ (terrace house) / 50 m³ (any other house) additional roof volume. The original house, not the one standing today, is the baseline, so earlier owners' works eat into the allowance first.

What Hounslow's record suggests about route choice

The borough recorded 445 certificate applications. On the neighbour-consultation route for deeper rear extensions it granted 20 and refused 59, a heavy tilt towards refusal. If your extension is meant to go beyond the standard depth, a certificate cannot help and prior approval in Hounslow looks hard on that evidence, so a full planning application in Hounslow may be the better start.

Hounslow granted 74.7 per cent of decided householder applications, and it met the deadline in 98 per cent of them. The adopted plan is the Hounslow Local Plan 2015-2030 (Volumes 1 and 2), and officers lean on the Character, Sustainability and Design Codes SPD for design questions. A certificate is not weighed against either, but we use both to make borderline measurements sit comfortably.

Lawful Development Certificate in Hounslow: from survey to submission

We visit, measure the footprint, eaves and ridge, and record every outbuilding. The set contains a location plan, block plan, floor plans, elevations and a roof section. A second chartered technologist checks each figure against the Order, you approve, and we submit.

The council's fee is separate from ours: Half the normal planning fee (householder: £274). The statutory period is 8 weeks. Any amendment the officer requests is made without a further fee, and if the answer is no we weigh a redraw against an appeal in Hounslow with you. We promise a careful file, never a result.

Owners in Hounslow often want the loft and the rear done together. Each is measured against its own limit and then against the other, because both draw on the same original house, and the sheet shows the loft volume and the rear depth side by side. If one pushes you over, we say which and by how much, so you can trim it on paper at no cost instead of discovering it at refusal.

What to have ready

Gather the title plan if you hold one, any earlier permissions or certificates for the address, and dated photographs of work done by a previous owner. Where a previous extension has no paperwork, tell us early: we measure it and decide whether it sits in your allowance or needs its own evidence. After the certificate, the same survey feeds our building regulations drawings without a second visit.