Rear extension drawings in Kensington and Chelsea

Reading the back of the terrace

Because the test is the building line of the neighbours, we begin with a measured survey of your rear elevation, and we record the neighbouring extensions from the boundary, from photographs and from the planning history. Where several houses have already extended, the line they form is the one you are judged against.

A lower ground floor, a garden at a different level or a tree close to the boundary can each shape the design. The borough has 4,560 tree preservation orders across 41 zones, so we plot trees on the survey, and check which are protected before the design fixes a foundation.

Gardens carry the character of a street. They make up 17.5 per cent of the borough's land in the Greater London Authority's land-use data, and the drawings show what is kept as well as what is built.

Light and privacy count alongside the building line. A deeper extension casts shadow on the neighbour's garden and puts a new window or roof terrace close to their windows, so we show the position of every opening, the height of every wall on the boundary and the effect on the neighbour's ground-floor window, in plan and section.

Conservation areas, Article 4 and listed houses

With 39 conservation areas in the borough, we check first whether your house is inside one. Conservation area status narrows what an officer will accept at the back and removes some permitted rights. The borough also has 84 Article 4 directions, which can remove rights that would otherwise apply.

Historic England records 1,350 listed building entries in the borough. A listed house needs listed building consent for most alterations, in addition to or instead of planning permission, and that application needs its own heritage justification.

Where permitted rights do not cover the design, the route is a householder application. The council fee is £548, paid to the council.

Materials and detail carry weight in a conservation area. Matching brick or stucco, slate, lead and timber windows are typical choices, and a modern glazed extension can be accepted when it is well detailed and sits quietly behind the original. The drawings include large-scale details of the junction with the existing wall, so the officer reads the quality of the proposal.

How the borough decides householder applications

Kensington and Chelsea decided 664 householder applications in its latest published year, granted 93.7 per cent and decided 91.9 per cent in time.

Those numbers cover every type of householder project and say nothing about a particular rear extension. We use them for timing, not for prediction.

For a project of this kind it is sensible to allow extra time. Conservation area applications may need heritage statements, tree reports or neighbour consultation, and we list what the council is likely to ask for at the start so nothing slows the submission.

What the drawings include and what they cost

A Kensington and Chelsea set shows existing and proposed floor plans, elevations and sections, with a location plan and block plan. For a conservation area house we add the rear elevation of neighbouring houses where it helps the officer read the building line. Our fee is £695 including VAT, fixed before you commit.

A second chartered technologist checks every sheet, and if the council asks for changes we redraw at no charge until approval. For the borough overview see architectural drawings in Kensington and Chelsea, or read the London guide to rear extension drawings.

Related projects and neighbouring boroughs

A larger house might add a floor: double-storey extension drawings in Kensington and Chelsea. To compare every shape, see house extension drawings in Kensington and Chelsea.

Nearby, the same questions are answered differently in Westminster, Hammersmith and Fulham and Wandsworth.