New build drawings in Greenwich

A World Heritage setting and a long list of listed buildings

Greenwich has 1 World Heritage Site intersecting its boundary, together with 540 listed building entries and 23 conservation areas. Even a plot some distance from the Maritime Greenwich core can fall in views the council protects, and a new roofline that is fine in one street can be challenged in another.

That is why we draw sections and street elevations to a known datum, taken from our measured building survey work, and show the new ridge against its neighbours. The council's Royal Greenwich Local Plan: Core Strategy with Detailed Policies, adopted in 2,014, is the policy document an officer will cite.

The borough also has 22 entries on the Heritage at Risk register, so a derelict or neglected neighbour can be a planning consideration in itself.

How Greenwich has treated small schemes

Greenwich decided 396 minor applications in the latest return. It granted 79.3 per cent and decided 92.7 per cent within eight weeks or an agreed extension, the statutory period being 8 weeks.

Those figures cover every minor case, so they include extensions and changes of use as well as new dwellings. They show a council that decides on time and grants most small schemes, but they do not predict how it will view your plot, and we never present them as a promise.

No part of the borough is green belt, with a share of 0 per cent, so there is no belt test. The constraint instead is the character of the street and the amenity of neighbours. Only 48.4 per cent of households live in a house, which means many sites are in streets of flats or mixed terraces where a new house must be justified against its surroundings.

The standards every new Greenwich home must meet

The nationally described space standard sets minimum floor areas by bedroom count: Minimum GIA: 1b1p 39 m² (37 m² with shower), 1b2p 50 m², 2b3p 61 m², 2b4p 70 m² (one-storey dwellings); 3b4p 74 m², 3b5p 86 m². London adds its own accessibility rule: At least 10% M4(3) wheelchair user dwellings; all others M4(2).

Building regulations then take over. Our building regulations drawings in Greenwich carry the approved design into construction sheets, and the planning drawings in Greenwich page covers the application stage.

Drawing a new house against a protected skyline

Where a site lies near the river or the park, the council looks at the skyline as well as the street. A roof that is a little taller than its neighbours may be unremarkable in an ordinary suburb and a problem here, so we measure rather than estimate. Heights are taken from survey data, and the proposed ridge is drawn on an elevation of the whole terrace, not only on a section of the plot.

We also keep the roof simple. Plain pitched or flat roofs with modest parapets are easier to defend than complicated forms, and they make the structural engineer's task cheaper later. If the neighbouring houses share a material, a brick colour or a window proportion, we record it on the elevation and say how the new house follows it.

For a house that will be visible from public land, a verified view from the nearest viewpoint helps, and our 3D model can produce one. The council does not always ask for it, but where a heritage consultee comments, a clear image answers the comment faster than a paragraph.

Because water and drainage can also shape the plot, we mark the position of the nearest sewer on the site plan if the title or survey shows one, so building over or beside it is dealt with before design is fixed.

What you get from us

A fixed quote after our constraints check, a Revit model of your plot, two or three options with their areas, and a full submission set. If the council asks for amendments, we redraw free of charge until approval.

We cannot say what the council will decide. What we can say is that the set will have been drawn by one technologist and checked by another.