House extension in Chislehurst

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 council’s Urban Design Guide describes a scattered village that developed around the commons on a raised plateau, with settlements forming around Chislehurst Common and the routes crossing it. After the railway arrived in 1865 the area became fashionable with London businesspeople and took on the character of the Arts and Crafts Movement: large homes on spacious parcels of land within established woodland, reached by winding rural lanes. Parts of Chislehurst are more rural in character, and despite steady pressure for new housing through the 20th century, a strong overall consistency of character has been sustained.

Chislehurst Conservation Area, designated on 2 November 1971, is the largest in the borough, the guide says: mainly housing in the west, farmland and rural land in the east, and between them extensive Commons and open space, clusters of shops, services and community facilities, and further homes. Its listed buildings include Camden Place, a residence of Napoleon III in the 1870s, which the National Heritage List record on Planning Data gives as Grade II*, and the Church of St Nicholas, also Grade II*, with 16–19 Church Row, the Bull’s Head and the Prince Imperial Monument at Grade II.

The Chislehurst Conservation Area is the largest in the borough, so first check on the council’s interactive map whether a house falls inside it or just outside. Two Areas of Special Residential Character are separate again: the Marlings Park Estate, and the Bickley area, which the Local Plan places beside the Chislehurst conservation area. Neither a BR7 postcode nor the Chislehurst ward, one of Bromley’s 22 wards since 2022, settles any of this, and the ward order’s text gives no boundaries. After the map, check the Article 4 list and any list entry, then the title or lease and the property’s planning record.

Local design and consent context

Chislehurst is one of 47 conservation areas in Bromley, designated on 2 November 1971. The council says guidance has been prepared for all its conservation areas but, apart from five appraisals adopted in June 2025, it is available on request rather than online, so ask for the Chislehurst document before design starts. Local Plan Policy 41 describes conservation areas as areas of special architectural or historic interest, whose character or appearance is worth preserving or enhancing, and Policy 42 expects development next to one to preserve or enhance its setting and not detract from views into or out of it.

The 2019 Local Plan first designated the Marlings Park Estate, Chislehurst as an Area of Special Residential Character. It has 279 homes built from the 1930s to the 1970s, mostly two-storey detached houses on plots laid out regularly along long roads, and most are of Neo Tudor or Arts and Crafts design. Front gardens are mostly open and many are landscaped or fronted by low walls; Orpington Road is the exception, with gates, high boundary walls and hedges. Policy 44 asks development in such areas to respect, enhance and strengthen their special qualities.

Bromley’s statutory Development Plan is the Local Plan adopted on 16 January 2019, read with the London Plan. Its Policy 6 asks an extension’s scale, form and materials to respect or complement the house, and its Policy 8 normally keeps at least 1 metre of side space for proposals of two or more storeys, including extensions. The council’s design guide, a supplementary planning document adopted on 5 July 2023, gives guidance only, since an SPD cannot make new policy. The Local Plan is under review; its second Regulation 18 consultation ran from July to September 2025, and nothing from the review is adopted policy.

Access and site planning

Placing a skip on a Bromley public road needs the council’s temporary highway licence, and only skip companies on its register may apply; each licence covers two weeks. A private road where public access is restricted or controlled needs none, but an unadopted highway that the public may pass along does. Scaffolding that obstructs the highway, or a hoarding reaching the footway or carriageway, needs the council’s consent, and a parking bay suspension should be applied for at least three working days before it is needed. The Commons bye-laws bar unauthorised building materials on Commons land, so agree any use of it with the trustees first.

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

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