Planning appeals in Kensington and Chelsea

Basements, the commonest battleground

The council's Basements SPD sets detailed tests for excavation, and a basement refusal will usually cite it. Reasons cited can include the size of the lightwell, the depth, the effect on trees, construction traffic and the way the works might affect neighbouring houses.

An appeal against a basement refusal is a technical bundle. We assemble the drawings, section details and structural statement so that the plan, the engineer's method and our statement tell one story. Where the dispute is over a lightwell or a garden proportion, a dimensioned plan with the policy limit shown beside the proposal settles it more quickly than argument.

Trees, listed buildings and Article 4 directions

The borough has 4,560 tree preservation orders, 1,350 listed entries, 39 conservation areas and 84 Article 4 directions. That is a heavy layer of control, and a refusal often rests on more than one of them.

A tree officer's objection needs a tree survey and a root protection plan on the drawings. A heritage objection needs the significance of the building set out and the harm assessed against it. An Article 4 direction may mean the work needed permission in the first place. We map all three against your plot at the start, so the appeal does not answer one objection while ignoring another.

Prior approval and certificates here

The council recorded 0 large-extension prior approvals in its latest return, and 25 Lawful Development Certificate applications. For a flat, or a house where rights have been removed, the permitted-development route is closed or limited. If you built on that assumption and were refused, we check the legal position before anything else.

Our planning drawings in Kensington and Chelsea page describes the full application route that most schemes here follow.

Reading an unusual refusal

When a council grants almost every householder application, its refusals deserve close attention. Our first step is to find the exact sentence the case turned on. Often it is a single paragraph in the officer's report, such as the effect on a neighbour's garden or the loss of a historic rear elevation.

We also search the register for the council's own earlier decisions on similar houses. In a borough with a long history of detailed policy, a precedent two streets away can be decisive, and an inconsistency in treatment is a ground an inspector takes seriously.

Where the reasons are sound, we advise against an appeal. That saves you the cost of a statement, and it leaves time to submit a revised scheme while the original design thinking is fresh.

If you believe the council treated you differently from a neighbour, say so in the first email. We pull the register entries for both addresses and compare the officer's reasoning side by side.

Costs, timing and what to expect

The cost of an appeal is in its preparation, which is why we quote a fixed fee after the free constraints check.

The national median for householder appeals was 11.6 weeks on written representations, and basement cases with technical evidence can take longer. Build that into your programme, and do not instruct builders until you have a decision.

What we send to the Inspectorate

We prepare the statement, the corrected drawings and a site photograph sheet, then have a second chartered technologist check the bundle. Our architectural drawings in Kensington and Chelsea page lists the rest of our work in the borough.