Planning appeals in the City of London

Listed estates, the Barbican and the heritage layer

Heritage dominates the planning picture. The council publishes 28 conservation areas, and Historic England lists 637 entries within the boundary. The council's data also records 1 Article 4 direction.

The guidance named for residential life is the Barbican Estate Listed Building Management Guidelines: Volume I Introduction and Volume II Residential (SPD). An alteration to a home on that estate is read against those management guidelines, and a refusal may refer to them. The statement for an appeal then has to deal with two decisions: planning permission and listed building consent. Those have separate applications and separate appeals, and mixing them risks missing a deadline.

The Local Plan is the City of London Local Plan 2015, adopted in 2,015. That is an older plan than most London boroughs work from, so an inspector will weigh its policies against national policy as it now stands. Part of our work is spelling that comparison out.

Timescales and what they cover

Householder written-representation appeals had a national median of 11.6 weeks in the Inspectorate's latest statistics, and the twelve-month median for all written-representation cases was 18 weeks. Allowed rates nationally were 31 per cent for section 78 appeals.

These are national medians and rates for finished cases, covering every kind of development. They are background, and they do not describe a home in the Square Mile. For a flat the longer window gives more room, yet the same advice holds: start early, because heritage evidence and lease checks take time to assemble.

What the appeal bundle contains

The statement answers each refusal reason in turn with reference to the development plan and to the heritage guidance the officer applied. Drawings are corrected where the refusal found a gap. In a dense setting the argument is often about daylight, outlook or the visible effect of a small change on a listed elevation, so we draw sections and elevations with the neighbouring facades.

Another chartered technologist reads the bundle before submission, and all the sheets come from one model so the dimensions agree. Our planning drawings page explains the method.

Flats bring a landlord into the picture

Many City homes are leasehold. A planning appeal does not remove the need for your freeholder's consent under the lease. We ask for your lease early and note any clause about alterations, external appearance or structural walls. Where the lease plan and the real layout differ, a corrected set of lease plans can head off a dispute that would otherwise surface after the appeal is won.

We therefore ask for the lease alongside the planning history, because the right strategy for a leasehold flat depends on both.

Other routes worth weighing

A revised application can be quicker where the refusal is narrow. A Lawful Development Certificate may settle whether certain internal work needed permission at all, and if you converted a unit without consent, our retrospective planning applications page applies.

The City's wider picture is on our City of London architectural drawings page. We quote each route at a fixed price, you decide, and the outcome belongs to the inspector, so we cannot promise a result.