Planning appeals in Haringey

The South Tottenham guidance

Haringey publishes a document with an unusually local focus, the House extensions in South Tottenham SPD (revised). It applies to a defined set of streets and sets out what extensions the council will accept on the terraces and semis there. If your refusal came from that area, the SPD is the benchmark, and the appeal turns on how closely your scheme follows it or why a departure is justified by the building.

Elsewhere, officers apply the Haringey Local Plan: Strategic Policies 2013-2026 (consolidated with 2017 alterations), with the Development Management DPD, Site Allocations DPD and Tottenham Area Action Plan. We read the cited policy line by line, because a refusal that quotes a policy about new homes in a householder case, or one that mixes up two similar roads, can be corrected on appeal.

Article 4 and houses in multiple occupation

The council publishes 25 Article 4 directions, and Haringey also has an Article 4 direction for houses in multiple occupation. Where a direction applies, work that would otherwise be permitted needs a planning application, and a refusal cannot be answered by pointing to permitted development.

For an HMO conversion refusal the appeal looks at amenity, parking and the balance of uses in the area, not at design. For a householder case under a direction, it looks at the features the direction protects, such as windows, roof covering or front walls. We map the direction against the address before we advise.

Housing, heritage and gardens

Haringey has 33 conservation areas and 289 list entries, though no scheduled monuments (0) and a small Green Belt fringe of 2 per cent. 38.9 per cent of households live in a house and 37.2 per cent own their home, and gardens take up 26.6 per cent of the land.

That mix of Victorian terraces, flats and larger gardens points to the common appeal subjects: loft conversions, side returns, rear outbuildings and conversion of a single house into flats.

Timing and other routes

On the Inspectorate's latest figures a written-representations householder appeal took a median of 11.6 weeks, and 31 per cent of section 78 appeals were allowed in the quarter. These are national numbers.

Haringey dealt with 396 lawful development certificate applications in the latest return. A Lawful Development Certificate can resolve doubt about existing or planned work without an appeal, and larger rear extensions may suit prior approval. If the work is already built, see retrospective planning applications.

What our Haringey appeals include

A statement that answers each reason in order, coordinated drawings from one model, and a comparison sheet of the terrace or street where character is in dispute. A reviewer outside the drafting team reads it before it is filed. The fee is fixed after the free constraints check.

Learn more on our planning appeals page, or see architectural drawings in Haringey. The outcome rests with the inspector alone.

Questions to settle before you file

Ask whether you would accept the scheme with conditions, whether a smaller version would satisfy you, and whether the building work has a start date that the appeal timetable might disrupt. An honest answer to those three questions shapes the whole approach. A householder who would happily build a slightly shallower extension is often better served by a quick revised application than by months of waiting, while one who needs the full depth for a specific purpose has a stronger reason to appeal.