House extension in Brackenbury Village

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 profile divides Bradmore into five sub-areas. Its sub-area 2 includes Brackenbury Road and Brackenbury Gardens, Benbow, Beauclerc, Coulter, Hebron, Marco, Tabor, Aldensley and Agate Roads, Carthew Villas, part of Sycamore Gardens and Nos. 155–161 Goldhawk Road. It is characterised by later Victorian terraces of two and three storeys, many with raised ground floors and basements, and the profile finds it generally grander than sub-area 1, with wider tree-planted streets and larger front gardens. Nos. 104–116 (even) and 127–139 (odd) Brackenbury Road, with 22, 51, 53 and 55 Aldensley Road, were the original village shopping parade.

Sub-area 1, the largest, includes Atwood, Perrers and Carthew Roads, and the profile gives it an overriding character of tightly knit streets of two-storey cottages with small front and back gardens; Carthew Road is a long street of almost identical two-storey cottages in gault brick. Sub-area 5, which the profile calls the most recent addition, covers Overstone, Kilmarsh and Southerton Roads and part of Glenthorne Road; the profile describes original mid-Victorian terraced housing, with very few exceptions, and recorded that many of the houses had been converted into flats.

In the Local Plan, Brackenbury Village names only a neighbourhood parade at 127a–139 Brackenbury Road and 22 and 53–55 Aldensley Road. Neither that name nor a postcode (the council’s register files Nos. 1 and 1A Brackenbury Road under W6 but the Goldhawk Road parade under W12) settles which council decides, whether the Bradmore boundary takes in your house, whether it is listed or a Building of Merit, or which consents apply; the profile itself places the middle section of Dalling Road in the Ravenscourt & Starch Green Conservation Area instead. GOV.UK’s council finder, the council’s two Bradmore maps, the statutory list, the Buildings of Merit register and the Article 4 directions are where to check those points for an exact address; the lease or title and past planning decisions fill in the rest.

Local design and consent context

Bradmore was first designated in April 1989 and extended eastward on 9 April 1991. A Cabinet decision of 6 October 2014 extended it again from 13 October 2014, adding Nos. 2–26 (even) and 1–21 (odd) Brackenbury Gardens, Nos. 1–9 Providence Villas and Nos. 1, 1A, 1B and 3–15 (odd) Brackenbury Road, with numbered properties on Goldhawk Road, Sycamore Gardens, Glenthorne Road and Overstone, Southerton, Iffley and Kilmarsh Roads. Its 92-page character profile, consulted on from 27 February to 31 March 2017, was adopted by Cabinet on 10 July 2017 with effect from 17 July. In October 2026 the council’s Bradmore page still said the profile would be published shortly; the adopted text sits as Appendix 4 to the Cabinet report. Bradmore is not among the eleven conservation areas whose boundaries changed on 13 November 2018.

The profile’s guidelines treat front roof extensions as generally unacceptable, expect rear roof extensions to be sympathetic and resist the loss of hipped roofs where they belong to the original pattern; on Brackenbury Gardens the profile says mansards on a few north-side houses spoiled the original hipped roofs. They resist removing original chimney stacks that are a significant feature of the roofline and paving planted front gardens for parking, and say brick should not be painted, rendered or clad. The profile also identifies 18 key views, View 5 looking from Brackenbury Road towards Brackenbury Primary School.

Once a direction has removed a class of permitted development, the council’s Article 4 page says, work in that class requires planning permission. The council also keeps a summary list of the properties concerned, whose last amendment was on 1 October 2011 and which it warns may contain errors, so check the direction itself for your number. Apart from the Bradmore directions, an Article 4 direction on basements has applied across the borough from 26 April 2018, outside the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation area.

Access and site planning

A start date depends on the street arrangements, so first agree the skip position, any scaffold and where deliveries will stop. In Hammersmith and Fulham a skip licence can be applied for only by a skip company, runs for at least 14 days and never allows a skip on the footpath; only a scaffolding company may apply for a scaffolding licence; and a hoarding licence is open only to building contractors, for at least one month. The council asks for no less than eight days’ notice of a suspension of up to six bays for up to three days, and weekend days count towards it.

Continue planning

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

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