Planning and building regulation drawings in Earl's Court (SW5)

The leasehold structure matters as much as the planning rules. A rear extension on a garden flat in Eardley Crescent might need sign-off from a freeholder and the flat above before it needs sign-off from the council, and the shared roof, shared drains and shared party walls behind a single stucco frontage mean neighbours have a real stake in what gets built. We ask about the lease early, not as an afterthought, because a design that ignores it gets redrawn later anyway. Add in a conservation area over most of the square and a council that treats basement excavation with real caution, and the honest answer for most SW5 homeowners is that permitted development barely applies. We tell people that on the first call, then draw what will actually pass.

Planning in Earl's Court: what to know before you apply

Kensington & Chelsea rarely lets permitted development do the work. Conservation-area coverage across the borough is close to total, and where a building is also listed, alterations that would be routine elsewhere, a new window, a rear dormer, an internal wall, need a full application and often listed-building consent alongside it. The council's basements policy is one of the tightest in the country: new subterranean space is generally capped at a single storey, with the extent of excavation controlled rather than left to the applicant. For a stucco terrace converted into flats, that policy sits on top of an ordinary planning application, not instead of it. We start every SW5 project by checking conservation status, listing, and lease consent together, because missing any one of them stalls the drawings later rather than sooner.

Applications are decided by Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea — its planning pages.