New build drawings in Ealing

How Ealing has been deciding small schemes

In the latest return Ealing decided 821 minor applications, granting 80 per cent, and decided 94.2 per cent inside eight weeks or an agreed extension. This is past data covering extensions and changes of use as well as new homes, so we use it as context and not as a forecast.

Gaps in a file are found quickly, so we front-load the set with what the officer needs, namely a dimensioned site plan, a schedule of areas, sections through the tallest point and an elevation of each face that meets a neighbour.

Only 50.3 per cent of households here live in a house, and 46.2 per cent own their home, so a good share of Ealing's building stock is flats. Many applicants are therefore adding one house to a street rather than replacing one.

Policy, heritage and open land

The development plan is the Ealing Local Plan: Development (or Core) Strategy DPD (2012), with Development Sites DPD and Development Management DPD (December 2013). It is an older plan, so we read it alongside the London Plan and the national space and access rules when we write the policy note for your scheme. The council's SPD 4 - Residential extensions is written for householders, and its tests for outlook and spacing are a useful guide when a new house sits between existing ones.

Ealing has 31 conservation areas and 309 listed building entries, so a protected neighbour is likely, and 18 entries are on the Heritage at Risk register. Green belt covers 6 per cent of the borough, small in area but still worth checking.

Domestic gardens make up 25.6 per cent of the land, which is the raw material for most infill proposals. Our planning drawings in Ealing service covers the full application.

Building regulations and the standards that change the plans

Planning consent leads to a second set of standards. Accessibility is one: At least 10% M4(3) wheelchair user dwellings; all others M4(2). The water limit of 125 litres/person/day, or 110 where the optional requirement applies and the rule that Associated parking spaces for new dwellings need EV charge points both alter fittings and parking layouts.

We carry these into construction sheets in our building regulations drawings for Ealing package, so the engineer and the builder work from one model.

Daylight, outlook and the neighbour on the other side

In a borough where flats and houses sit side by side, the most contested question on a new house is often what it does to the building next door. Officers look at the outlook from the nearest windows, the shadow cast on the neighbouring garden at different times of year, and whether a new flank wall now stands where a gap used to be.

We answer those questions with drawings, not adjectives. A section through the gap between the buildings shows the new roof against the old, with the angle from the nearest window marked, and our model produces a simple shadow study where the neighbour's rear garden is small. If the answer is awkward we say so while options are still open, and propose a lower eaves, a stepped rear or a changed roof pitch that settles it.

The same discipline covers privacy. Windows that look onto a neighbour's garden at close range are the usual reason an officer asks for obscure glazing, and a house designed with its habitable windows facing front and rear seldom needs that change. We would rather design the problem out than draw it in and wait for the comment.

All of this reaches the council in one coordinated set, so the file an Ealing officer opens is complete from the first page.

What we do first

Send the address and a short description. We check the levy zone, constraints and site history, tell you which route applies and quote a fixed fee. After a survey, we test options in our 3D model and you choose one in writing.

If the council requests changes during the application, we redraw without charge until approval. We never promise a decision, and an officer's view is the council's alone.