Planning and building regulation drawings in Hornchurch (RM12)

Elm Park is a different animal. It was planned in the 1930s as a Homesteads-style estate laid out around the station, and its streets include Elm Park Avenue, Calbourne Avenue, Rosewood Avenue and Abbs Cross Lane. The houses are strikingly uniform, with matching bays, hipped roofs and frontages, so rear and roof extensions are the staple and continuity between neighbouring pairs is a recurring theme. Matching semis share party walls, which calls for careful structural and boundary detailing.

Conservation control is limited. In Hornchurch it centres on St Andrew's Church, while the RAF Hornchurch conservation area forms a heritage backdrop on the fringe of the Elm Park estate. Neither is a blanket restriction across the district, and there is no published householder Article 4 direction here. That leaves the national rules and the planned-estate character as the main factors, so for most houses the design question is how well an addition keeps to the pattern of the street.

Planning in Hornchurch: what to know before you apply

Across most of RM12, Havering applies the ordinary householder rules, and the interwar semi-detached stock commonly retains permitted development rights. Planning permission becomes the route when a scheme breaks the limits, and in a conservation area, such as the land around St Andrew's Church, roof enlargements, side extensions and rear extensions of more than one storey are not permitted development. On the Elm Park estate, where an application is needed, officers expect rear and roof additions to respect the uniform 1930s character, so dormer scale and roof form are read against the neighbouring pairs. Flats have no householder permitted development rights. Retained front gardens and verges also shape what can be done with frontages and parking. We check designations for each address first.

Applications are decided by London Borough of Havering — its planning pages.