Planning and building regulation drawings in Woolwich (SE18)

What people actually build here follows that split. In the terraced streets near the town centre and Powis Street, it's rear and side-return extensions, and loft conversions that add a bedroom without breaking the roofline. Around the Royal Arsenal, it's internal reconfiguration and small structural openings inside flats, since the external envelope of a listed former armaments building isn't something an owner can touch without a formal listed-building consent process running alongside any planning application. Woolwich Common itself, and the Grade I listed Royal Artillery Barracks that anchors its southern edge, shape what's realistic on the streets nearest that green edge too, since anything visible from the common gets read against that setting.

Greenwich doesn't publish its household Article 4 schedule to the national register, which means we can't tell you from open data alone whether your specific roof extension or garage conversion still counts as permitted development. What we can say is that the Woolwich, Royal Arsenal and Woolwich Common conservation areas are the controls that actually decide most cases here, and we check the schedule against your address with the council before we draw anything.

Planning in Woolwich: what to know before you apply

The Royal Borough of Greenwich assesses householder applications against the conservation area your street sits in, and Woolwich, Royal Arsenal and Woolwich Common each carry slightly different expectations for materials, window proportions and roof alterations. Inside the Royal Arsenal conservation area, the volume of listed Georgian and Victorian buildings means the council applies close scrutiny and its own design guidance to anything touching windows, brickwork or roofscape, even for works that would be unremarkable elsewhere. A side extension or loft dormer inside any of these conservation areas is not automatically permitted development, and the larger-home-extension prior approval route isn't available inside a conservation area either, so we start every project by confirming what's actually allowed at your specific address rather than assuming a standard route applies. Because the household Article 4 position isn't published nationally for this borough, that confirmation step matters more here than in a district where the schedule is open to check in advance. We build the drawing package around whatever the council's answer turns out to be, through a full planning application, so there's no redesign later.

Applications are decided by Royal Borough of Greenwich — its planning pages.