House extension in Bromley and Bickley

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

Bromley Council’s Urban Design Guide of July 2023 describes Bickley as a predominantly residential suburban area of mainly detached houses, with no clearly defined centre; public open space is limited, but well-spaced houses have large gardens. It describes the conservation area there, listed by the council as Bickley Park and designated on 28 October 1986, as around 90 mainly residential properties, mostly large houses on spacious plots, together with St George’s Church of 1864, and notes good examples of Arts and Crafts buildings, a style mirrored in modern housing throughout Bickley.

The Local Plan’s Bickley Area of Special Residential Character stretches from the railway south of Bickley Park Road north to Chislehurst Road, and from Pines Road east to Station Approach, plus an enclave around Merlewood Drive. It excludes the 1960s redevelopment of the former Bickley Hall and surrounds a conservation area in Woodlands Road. The plan calls its character spacious inter-war development, with large houses in substantial plots beside the conservation areas at Chislehurst and Bickley. The design guide says the Mavelstone Road, Bickley Conservation Area, designated in May 1987, has a strong representation of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Take 35A Chislehurst Road: listed Grade II, it stands in Bickley, inside the Bickley Park Conservation Area. A BR1 postcode tells you no more. It does not show whether the Area of Special Residential Character, a conservation area or an Article 4 direction covers a house, or whether it is listed. A ward name such as Bickley & Sundridge, one of the 22 wards in use since 2022, does not show it either, and the ward order’s text sets out no boundaries. Look the house up on the council’s interactive map, the Article 4 list and any list entry, then read the title or lease and the planning history.

Local design and consent context

An Area of Special Residential Character is a Local Plan designation, not a conservation area. Policy 44 requires development in one to respect, enhance and strengthen its special and distinctive qualities, and the plan’s guidelines for these areas say backland development will not be permitted, new development must take account of existing front and rear building lines, mature trees and landscaping are to be kept wherever possible, and proposals that significantly increase hard surfacing in front of houses will be resisted unless they come with satisfactory landscaping.

The Bickley ASRC direction, made on 3 March 2021 and sealed on 15 March 2021, was confirmed to come into effect on 15 March 2022. Its schedule removes Part 1 Class AA, the right to add storeys to a house, and Part 20 Classes A and AA to AD, which allow new homes to be built on top of existing buildings; it does not deal with ordinary extensions, and it applies only inside the ASRC boundary. A separate 2023 direction for the Southborough Road, Bickley neighbourhood centre, later modified by the Secretary of State, concerns changing commercial premises into homes; it does not cover houses.

The Bromley Local Plan was adopted as the statutory Development Plan on 16 January 2019 and is used with the London Plan. For extensions, Policy 6 asks that scale, form and materials respect or complement the house and that dormers suit the roofscape and sit away from prominent roof pitches unless dormers are a feature of the area; Policy 8 normally requires at least 1 metre to the side boundary for two or more storeys. The Urban Design Guide, a supplementary planning document adopted on 5 July 2023, is guidance and does not set new policy.

Access and site planning

A skip on the public highway needs Bromley’s temporary highway licence, which only skip companies on the council’s register can apply for; it is valid for two weeks, and the council asks you to allow two working days for processing. No licence is needed on a private road where public access is restricted or controlled, but an unadopted road the public can pass along still needs one. For the red routes, the A21, including Kentish Way, and the A232, the council sends enquiries to Transport for London, which licenses skips there, and it grants no parking dispensations on them. Scaffolding or a hoarding on the highway needs consent too; a parking bay suspension needs an application at least three working days before it starts.

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The Bromley and Bickley area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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