Planning and building regulation drawings in Catford (SE6)

What people actually build here splits along those lines. A rear addition on a Rushey Green terrace is usually about clawing back kitchen space that Edwardian houses were never given. A loft on one of the Corbett Estate's Edwardian streets is as much about the roofline as the bedroom it creates, because the estate was laid out with a consistency of frontage that neighbours and planners both notice. Interwar semis toward Bellingham tend to have more side space to play with, so a side-return or garage conversion is often the simpler route. None of this is guesswork about what a specific house can take; it's a pattern that shapes the first conversation with a client, before a survey ever confirms it street by street.

Planning in Catford: what to know before you apply

Lewisham assesses householder work against what a street was built to look like, and Catford's Edwardian estates make that assessment literal. Culverley Green sits inside a conservation area with an Article 4 direction, which strips away the usual permitted development rights for elevations and rooflines, so alterations there go through full planning even when they'd be routine two streets over. The Corbett Estate carries that same scrutiny informally: its terraces were built to match, and the council reads a mismatched extension or a replaced roofline as a break in that pattern, conservation area or not. Layered on top is Lewisham's small-HMO Article 4 direction, which means turning a Catford house into a house in multiple occupation needs planning permission rather than relying on a permitted change of use. We check a property's exact designation, including whether it sits inside Culverley Green, before we draw anything, because the difference between permitted development and a full application changes both the timeline and the drawings a client needs.

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