House extension in Brook Green

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

Hammersmith and Fulham’s character profile, approved on 8 March 2004 and updated in 2006 and 2007, centres the Brook Green Conservation Area on the Green, once the core of a separate hamlet and now a 1.80-hectare open space that the Local Plan marks as common land. Most buildings facing it went up between 1860 and 1916; Holy Trinity, Grade II*, dates from 1851. South of the Green, the original 1971 area holds Grade II villas at 3 to 11 (odd) Bute Gardens and 8 to 46 (even) Rowan Road and locally listed cottages at 1 to 6 Rowan Terrace.

Addison Gardens, Lakeside Road and Bolingbroke Road are described in the Lakeside / Sinclair / Blythe Road profile of July 2017. Lakeside Road is mostly imposing three-storey terraces with semi-basements, with modern four-storey blocks of flats towards its northern end, and 67 to 97 (odd) and 70 to 148 (even) Addison Gardens are matching three-storey red-brick terraces with Dutch gables. On Bolingbroke Road, 1 to 21 (odd) and 2 to 24 (even) are stock-brick houses of three storeys plus basement, with canted bays, heavy stucco and a few added mansards; the rest of the road is red brick.

Use the name and the W6 or W14 postcode only as a starting point. Brook Green names a council ward as well as a conservation area; W14 also reaches into Kensington and Chelsea, whose Holland Park Conservation Area is covered by W11, W14 and W8; and the Brook Green Conservation Area boundary has shifted, with some properties transferred to the Lakeside / Sinclair / Blythe Road Conservation Area from 18 July 2017 and 50F Brook Green added from 13 November 2018. Answer each question from the address itself: the borough it lies in, where it falls on the current conservation area map, any national list entry, any row for it in the council’s Article 4 property list, and what its planning history and the title or lease record.

Local design and consent context

The profile’s design guidelines speak directly to refurbishment. It generally rejects front roof extensions, accepting one only where such extensions have already significantly impaired the terrace, and treats raising a ridge to gain internal ceiling height as unacceptable. Rear extensions, it says, should not cover more than half the width of the main building or rise above one storey below the original eaves or parapet. It also states that rear roof terraces cut into the slates of rear extensions, and the removal of an original chimney stack visible from the street or a public space, need planning permission and should be resisted.

This neighbouring area was designated on 17 January 1990 and extended on 18 November 1991. In July 2017 a further extension and the transfer in of some Brook Green and Melrose properties were approved, and Cabinet adopted its character profile the same month. The profile splits the area into six sub-areas, among them Lakeside Road – Minford Gardens and Addison Gardens – Bolingbroke Road. It records an important view from Lakeside Road to the Grade II listed St Simon’s Church, and notes that most of its protected trees stand in the private courtyard enclosed by Richmond Way, Addison Gardens and Sinclair Gardens.

The council’s Planning Guidance Supplementary Planning Document, dated February 2018, names Brook Green among the village greens that first shaped the borough and are now the focus of conservation areas. Under its key principle HS4, permission will not normally be granted for a rear extension over 3.5 metres long, counting any existing extension and measured from the original back addition, one within 4 metres of the rear boundary, or one covering more than half the original rear open area. A first draft of a new Local Plan to 2042 has been prepared under Regulation 18, but it is still emerging and has not been adopted, so the 2018 plan remains the adopted plan.

Access and site planning

Work out the delivery route and a holding place for waste before work starts. On a Hammersmith and Fulham road, only the skip company can apply for a skip licence, for 14 days at least; no part of a skip may sit on the footpath or a pedestrianised area, and a parking bay must be suspended before a skip goes in it. The scaffolding company applies for a scaffold licence, and the building contractor, never the resident, for a hoarding licence, each for a month or more. Bay suspensions need notice: eight days at least where up to six bays are suspended for no more than three days, and longer for bigger suspensions. Brook Green, Shepherd’s Bush Road and Hammersmith Road are not among the roads whose pavements Transport for London looks after.

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

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