House extension in Emerson Park

Connect the added space to the existing home.

Start with the house extension brief

Begin with how the new space will meet the old rooms, garden and circulation. A measured brief should record boundaries, levels, existing drains, neighbouring windows and the parts of the building you intend to keep.

Develop daylight, structure and services alongside the floor plan. Agree which openings and finishes are included, how the existing home will be protected during construction and which decisions need surveys or approval before a quotation.

The local building context

The 2009 document applies to the area between Butts Green Road and Wingletye Lane, north of the railway line and Emerson Park station. Havering has 11 conservation areas, and Emerson Park is not one of them; instead the Local Plan counts it as one of the borough’s two special townscape or landscape character areas, typified by large and varied dwellings in spacious, mature, well landscaped grounds, and asks development there to preserve that spacious character.

The document divides the area into sectors with their own criteria. Sector 1, on Butts Green and Ardleigh Green Roads, has been substantially developed for flats. Sectors 2, 3 and 4, including Nelmes Way, Nelmes Crescent, Great Nelmes Chase and Ayloffs Walk, contain mainly medium-sized family houses. Sector 5, including Curtis Road, Beverley Gardens and Woodhall Crescent, mixes medium and large detached houses with smaller, often semi-detached homes of the kind found in the other sectors. Sector 6, including Woodlands Avenue, Sylvan Avenue, Elm Grove and Parkstone Avenue, is typified by medium and large houses in spacious, well landscaped grounds.

The 2009 schedule lists properties as they stood in February 2009, and it overlaps: Nelmes Way appears in Sectors 2, 3 and 6, and 2 Ardleigh Green Road in Sectors 1 and 6. Emerson Park is also the name of a council ward, which is not the same as the Policy Area, and an RM11 postcode says nothing about sector, listing or consents. Havering asks owners to make sure no Article 4 direction or planning condition applies before building. Check the council’s map and schedule for the exact property, then the title or lease and the planning history.

Local design and consent context

In Sector 6, no part of a new building or extension may come within 1m of a boundary shared with a neighbour at ground floor or 2m at first floor, and the document stresses that in most cases the council will expect more. The space kept between buildings should reflect the street scene around it. The document says that redeveloping several plots, or building on back land, generally brings higher density and shorter rear gardens, both harmful to the sector’s character, and that such proposals will not normally be permitted.

The Havering Local Plan was adopted at full council on 17 November 2021. It describes Emerson Park as one of the borough’s two special townscape or landscape character areas and asks development there to preserve its spacious character. Policy 10, on new homes on garden and backland sites, does not support plot subdivision or garden development in the Emerson Park Character Area unless it is robustly shown not to harm the area’s character and the plot sizes match those around them; Policy 28 supports well-designed development that sustains or enhances such an area’s special character; and Policy 27 asks how existing landscape features will be protected during construction.

Havering’s Residential Extensions and Alterations document of 2011, also retained, lists the Emerson Park document first among those to read alongside it. It says dormers should normally face the rear garden and stay well below the ridge; that where hipped roofs are characteristic of the house or street and the council has control, a gable end will not be acceptable; and that flat roofs are generally acceptable for single-storey rear extensions except where easily seen from the street or where an adjoining property already has a rear extension with a pitched roof.

Access and site planning

Havering reminds owners that placing anything on the highway without a written licence is an offence: a skip or materials on the road need a licence and must be signed, guarded and lit after dark. Skip licences are sent to the skip hire company, while a resident or the contractor may apply for a building materials licence. Scaffolding, hoarding or fencing on the highway needs its own licence, with 10 working days’ notice and proof of public liability insurance. Parking bay suspensions are open only to utility and street-work companies; tradespeople are pointed to the council’s parking dispensation page.

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The Emerson Park area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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