Loft conversion in Emerson Park

Test the roof space before settling on a layout.

Start with the loft conversion brief

A measured roof survey should establish headroom, structural spans and where a staircase could meet the floor below. Plan the stair, escape route, insulation and building services together before treating the loft as another room.

Compare the proposed roof shape with the address-specific design guidance below. Record chimneys, shared walls and neighbouring rooflines, then ask the appointed designers to identify the structural work and consents the proposal needs.

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

The Emerson Park Policy Area supplementary planning document was adopted in February 2009 to give further detail on policy DC69, on other areas of special townscape or landscape character, in the 2008 Core Strategy and Development Control Policies document. When the Local Plan replaced that document in November 2021, the council retained the 2009 document, and its list of adopted supplementary planning documents still includes it. Its boundary is mapped in Appendix 1, and Appendix 2 schedules the properties as at February 2009.

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.

The council’s Article 4 page lists directions for houses in multiple occupation, Gidea Park and Upminster, none of them specific to Emerson Park. HMO Direction 2 was confirmed on 3 November 2015 and came into force on 13 July 2016. Across the borough except four wards, which do not include Emerson Park, it means that turning a flat, terraced or semi-detached house into a house in multiple occupation needs planning permission. Detached houses are not covered, and the 2022 ward changes left its boundaries unchanged.

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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