House extension in Shepherd’s Bush

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 Ravenscourt and Starch Green profile, approved on 2 July 1997, describes three sub-areas. Sub-area B, Victorian housing north of Goldhawk Road, holds the conservation area’s earliest development there: terraces each with a uniform appearance and its own detailing. The profile finds the sub-area’s most impressive houses in Ashchurch Park Villas, mostly of 1870: Nos. 1–15 and 17–24 form a two-storey stock-brick terrace in pairs with stucco surrounds and parapet, and Nos. 25–32 are detached double-fronted houses with two-storey bays. Nos. 8–27 Ashchurch Grove are stock-brick pairs of 1870, some lacking their pierced stucco parapet.

The profile describes Rylett Road and Nos. 1–23 (odd) and 2–28 (even) Binden Road as two-storey brick houses with bay windows, designed as semi-detached pairs with red-brick string courses, most of their bays carrying pointed slate roofs known as Napoleon Hats. Bassein Park Road, which runs into Askew Road, has two- and three-storey mid-Victorian terraces. Rylett Crescent, once called Fortesque Road, has two-storey brick pairs at Nos. 1–17 and three-storey houses at Nos. 17–23, and the profile’s sub-area C text sets bungalows on its western side against three-storey houses opposite.

The name Shepherd’s Bush and a W12 postcode are labels, not answers: the council responsible, the line of any conservation boundary, a listing and the consents a job requires all turn on the exact address. The Ravenscourt and Starch Green profile says its eastern boundary is, in places, less clearly defined within residential streets, Askew Road and Ashchurch Grove among them, so an address on those streets may lie outside it, and the council’s 2015 register shows several Askew Road Buildings of Merit with no conservation area entered against them. Wendell Park ward meets Ealing on its north-western side. Work from the house number: check the council’s boundary map, the national list and the Article 4 list and directions for the planning questions, and the lease or title and earlier planning decisions for what has already been agreed.

Local design and consent context

The profile’s design guidelines run across all three sub-areas: rooflines should stay undisturbed, and Napoleon Hats, decorative ridge tiles, finials, cast-iron gutters and downpipes and original roof materials should be kept. In sub-area C it singles out roofs punched through by badly designed dormers and altered glazing patterns as the greatest risks, and notes that inappropriate alterations are particularly evident at the rear of properties in Wendell Road, a street whose Nos. 65–103 are in garden-suburb style. For directions and Buildings of Merit, do not stop at the lists printed in the profile, which the council’s page for the area says are not complete; check the direction summaries and the 2015 register too.

The Coningham and Lime Grove character profile, for conservation area 33, was approved on 9 February 2000 and updated in June 2004. The area was designated on 17 January 1990 to protect its double-fronted stucco villas, three-storey brick terraces and two-storey detached villas from demolition, cladding and roof extensions, and on 2 July 2002 it was extended to include Nos. 54 to 64 (even) and 54A Goldhawk Road. Its design guidelines treat a roof terrace formed by cutting into the slates over a rear extension as needing planning permission, and say such terraces should be resisted.

A new or extended basement is tested against Policy DC11, which keeps its reach into or under the garden to half the depth of the host building, measured from the principal rear elevation, and to half the garden’s depth, limits it to a single storey, with exceptions possible on large sites, requires at least one metre of soil over any part beneath a garden and asks for a Construction Method Statement by a qualified structural or civil engineer with every basement application.

Access and site planning

Residents cannot apply for skip, scaffold or hoarding licences in Hammersmith and Fulham: skip licences go to skip companies, for 14 days or more, while scaffold licences go to scaffolding companies and hoarding licences to building contractors, each for one month or more. Footpaths and pedestrianised areas are closed to skips altogether, while a skip in a parking bay must wait until a suspension is in force. Parking bay suspensions need notice that grows with their size and length: at least eight days for up to six bays (30 metres) over three days or fewer, two weeks for up to six bays for longer or for six to 12 bays for up to a week, and four weeks for more than 12.

Continue planning

The Shepherd’s Bush area guide · House extension across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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Design support: Hampstead Architecture & Planning.
Surveying support: Hampstead Chartered Surveyors.