Contemporary House Design in Wandsworth

Contemporary house design, at its simplest, means designing a new home in the architectural language of today rather than a pastiche of the past: clean, well-proportioned forms; considered massing that steps and breaks to suit the site; generous but controlled glazing that brings in daylight and frames views; a restrained, honest palette of materials; and a plan organised around how people actually live now — open living space that connects to the garden, flexible rooms, good storage, and homes that are quiet, warm and cheap to run. But in Wandsworth the phrase carries a more specific meaning, because almost everyone who searches for it is contemplating a genuinely new dwelling on a real plot, and that turns it from a question of taste into a planning and engineering project.

That distinction matters. A new dwelling is, in planning terms, a very different thing from an extension, a loft conversion or a change of use of an existing building. When you build a brand-new house on a plot — whether that plot is a garden, a gap in a terrace, the footprint of a house you have demolished, or a piece of former commercial land — you are creating an entirely new unit of accommodation, and that almost always requires full planning permission. There is no equivalent of the permitted development rights that let you extend a house or convert a shop; you cannot simply build a new home and notify the council afterwards.

So a contemporary house in Wandsworth has to do two jobs at once. It has to be a good, buildable piece of architecture — the thing the client actually wants to live in — and it has to be a policy-compliant planning proposal that Wandsworth Council can approve against its Local Plan, the London Plan and the national standards. The best contemporary designs are the ones where those two jobs reinforce each other: where a modern, site-specific approach to form, glazing and materials is precisely what allows the house to sit comfortably on a tight plot, respect its neighbours' light and privacy, meet the space and energy standards, and make a positive contribution to the street. Contemporary, done well, is not a risk to your planning application — it is often the design that wins it.

The first thing we establish on any Wandsworth new-house instruction, therefore, is whether the plot can take a dwelling at all, and if so, what kind. That means understanding the site's planning designations and history, its relationship to neighbours and the street, the daylight and amenity constraints, and the borough's policies on the type of plot you have — a replacement dwelling, a backland or garden site, an infill gap. Only once that is settled can we design a contemporary home that is both what you want and what will actually get consent and be built. Everything that follows is organised around that reality.

Wandsworth is a large south-west London borough that stretches from the Thames at Battersea, Nine Elms and Wandsworth Town down through Clapham, Balham, Tooting, Earlsfield, Putney, Southfields and Roehampton. It takes its name from the River Wandle, which flows into the Thames at Wandsworth and once powered one of the most concentrated industrial areas in the country — mills, breweries, dye works and factories lined the Wandle and the riverside, and for much of its history the town maintained a strong, largely self-sufficient local economy built on that diverse industrial base. That industrial past is why the borough today has so much former commercial and riverside land that has been, and is still being, transformed into housing.

The borough is exceptionally rich in heritage and character, which is central to any new-house scheme. Wandsworth has forty-six conservation areas, ranging from a single short street like Deodar Road in Putney to very large areas such as West Putney, and taking in the remains of old villages like Battersea Square, historic town centres like Wandsworth Town — dominated by the inter-war, Grade II listed Town Hall and the former South Thames College — and even substantial areas of twentieth-century social housing such as the Alton Estate in Roehampton, whose conservation area is the borough's richest in listed buildings, including Grade I and Grade II* examples of internationally significant post-war modernism. Putney's parish church of St Mary's, parts of which date to around 1450, sits at the historic foot of Putney Bridge. This is a borough that takes its townscape seriously, and a new house has to earn its place within it.

At the other end of the timeline, Wandsworth contains some of the most dramatic new development in London. Nine Elms and the Vauxhall–Battersea riverside — including the restored Battersea Power Station and the new US Embassy quarter — form one of the largest regeneration areas in Europe, delivering many thousands of new homes on former industrial and utility land. Roehampton has its own regeneration programme. These large schemes coexist with a borough whose everyday grain is overwhelmingly Victorian and Edwardian terraced streets, mansion blocks, and pockets of inter-war and post-war housing. For an individual contemporary house, the relevant context is almost never the big riverside towers but the fine grain: the terraced street, the leafy avenue, the mews, the back garden.

That housing stock shapes where new individual houses can go. The borough is largely built out, so the opportunities for a single new contemporary home tend to be specific and hard-won: the replacement of an existing, often undistinguished house with a better one on the same plot; a backland or garden plot behind or beside an existing property; an infill gap in a terrace or on a corner; a former garage site, workshop or piece of small commercial land; or the subdivision of an unusually large plot. Each of these plot types is treated differently by the Local Plan, and each raises its own design and neighbour-amenity issues, which is why the borough context is not background colour but the starting point of the design.

The people who commission a genuinely new contemporary house in Wandsworth fall into a few recognisable groups, and understanding which you are helps set the right expectations. The largest group is homeowners with a plot they already control: someone who owns a large-gardened house in Putney, Wandsworth Common or Balham and wants to build a second, contemporary home in the garden; someone who has bought a tired 1960s or 1970s house on a good plot in Southfields or Earlsfield intending to knock it down and replace it with something far better; or a family who own a house with a redundant garage, side plot or corner that could take an infill home.

The second group is self-builders and custom-build clients who have found or bought a plot specifically to build their own home — a rare and prized thing in inner London, and one that requires real care, because a plot only tends to survive undeveloped in Wandsworth if it is genuinely awkward. The third is small developers and investors who identify backland, infill or replacement-dwelling opportunities and want a high-quality contemporary design that maximises the plot's value while actually securing consent, because a well-designed compliant scheme is worth far more than a crammed one that gets refused.

What unites all of them is that a contemporary new house is a significant undertaking with a lot of moving parts — planning, design, structural engineering, energy, building services, party wall, construction — and getting any one of them wrong can stall or sink the whole thing. That is precisely why a coordinated service, where the architecture, the structure and the services are designed together and driven through planning and building regulations by one team, is worth so much on this type of project. The client who tries to assemble a separate architect, engineer, energy assessor and services designer and coordinate them by committee usually pays more, waits longer and ends up with clashes on site.

Whichever group you are in, the honest feasibility conversation comes first. We will tell you early whether your plot can realistically take a new house, what type and size of home the site and the policies can support, and whether the numbers work — before you spend money on a full design and application. On a borough as tightly regulated as Wandsworth, that honesty at the outset is the single most valuable thing an architect can offer.

The foundational fact of any new-house project is that building a brand-new dwelling is one of the clearest examples of 'development' that requires planning permission, and it needs full planning permission, not a lighter-touch route. Permitted development rights — the rights that let you extend a house, convert a loft, or in some cases change the use of a building — do not extend to creating a new dwelling on a fresh plot. You cannot build a new house under permitted development and simply notify the council; you must apply for, and obtain, full planning consent before you build.

This is true whether the plot is a garden, an infill gap, a former garage or workshop, or the site of a house you intend to demolish. Even where you are replacing an existing dwelling with a new one, the new house needs its own full planning permission — the presence of a house on the plot already does not carry over to a different, new building. (Demolition of the old house may itself need prior approval or, in a conservation area, consent, which we cover later.) The only meaningful new-dwelling shortcut in the system is the separate suite of change-of-use permitted development rights that convert existing commercial buildings into homes — a different thing entirely from building a new house, and one we handle on our change-of-use pages.

Because it is a full application, a new house is assessed against the entire development plan for Wandsworth — the adopted Wandsworth Local Plan (2023), the London Plan, and national policy in the National Planning Policy Framework — rather than the narrow, fixed list of matters that governs a prior-approval application. That means the principle of development on the plot, the design and townscape impact, the density and site optimisation, the standard and mix of the home, the amenity of both future occupiers and existing neighbours, trees and biodiversity, transport and parking, drainage and flood risk, energy and sustainability, and the financial obligations (CIL and any Section 106) all come into play. It is a broad, demanding test — but it is also the route that allows a genuinely designed, ambitious contemporary house.

The single most important early question is therefore not 'what should the house look like?' but 'will the council accept the principle of a new dwelling on this plot at all?' On some plots — a straightforward replacement dwelling on the same footprint — the principle is relatively secure and the argument is about design and impact. On others — a backland garden plot, or subdividing a plot to squeeze in an extra home — the principle itself is contested and has to be argued from the policies. We establish where your plot sits on that spectrum before anything else, because it determines the whole strategy of the application.

A new contemporary house in Wandsworth is judged first and foremost against the adopted Wandsworth Local Plan, which was adopted on 19 July 2023 and sets a fifteen-year framework to 2038. The plan carries a demanding housing target — a minimum of 20,311 new homes over the plan period, and at least 1,950 homes a year in its early years, with small sites expected to deliver a substantial share (a minimum of several hundred homes a year). That target matters to your scheme because it means the council is, in principle, supportive of well-designed additional housing on suitable sites; the argument on an individual house is rarely 'should there be more homes?' and almost always 'is this the right home, designed the right way, in this particular place?'

Design quality sits at the heart of the plan. Wandsworth's placemaking and design policies (the LP1–LP9 group of policies, informed by the London Plan's Policy D3 on optimising site capacity through a design-led approach and Policy D4 on delivering good design) require new development to be genuinely well designed, to respond to and enhance local character, and to make efficient use of land through a design-led approach rather than a mechanical density formula. The 'design-led approach' is important for contemporary houses: it means the right amount of development on a plot is whatever a high-quality design can accommodate well, respecting neighbours and townscape — which rewards a thoughtful, site-specific contemporary scheme and penalises an overdevelopment crammed onto the plot.

Height and massing are controlled carefully. Wandsworth's tall-buildings policy (Policy LP4) defines a tall building as one of seven storeys or more, or 21 metres or more in height, and identifies a separate 'mid-rise' category at five storeys or 15 metres — thresholds that individual houses sit well below, but which signal how seriously the borough scrutinises height and its impact on established, often low-rise residential streets. For a single contemporary house, the massing questions are about relating sensitively to the scale, roofline, building line and rhythm of the surrounding houses, not about towers — but the underlying policy expectation of a considered, context-driven response to scale is the same.

The practical consequence is that a successful contemporary house in Wandsworth is designed from the policies outward. It optimises the plot with a high-quality design rather than maximising it; it responds to the character of its particular street or backland setting; it manages its height, massing and building line to sit comfortably among its neighbours; and it makes a positive townscape contribution. We build the design and the accompanying design and access statement around exactly these policies, so the case officer can see, policy by policy, that the scheme complies — which is what turns a good design into a consented one.

Whatever the plot, a new home in Wandsworth has to be a proper size, and this is a hard edge rather than a matter of taste. New homes are expected to meet the nationally described space standard (NDSS), the minimum internal floor areas and room sizes that apply to new residential development, and Wandsworth's housing standards policy (Policy LP27) requires residential development to meet standards for internal space and daylight. The NDSS was introduced in March 2015 and remains the applicable benchmark: a one-bedroom, two-person dwelling must be at least 50 square metres of gross internal area; a two-bedroom, three-person home at least 61 square metres; a two-bedroom, four-person home at least 70 square metres; a three-bedroom, five-person home at least 93 square metres, and so on, with the figures rising with the number of storeys.

The standard also governs the rooms within the home, not just the total. A single bedroom must be at least 7.5 square metres and at least 2.15 metres wide; a double or twin bedroom must be at least 11.5 square metres, with at least one double at least 2.75 metres wide and every other double at least 2.55 metres wide. There are built-in storage requirements, and habitable rooms need a floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2.3 metres over at least 75 per cent of their area. For a bespoke contemporary house these minimums are usually comfortably exceeded — the point of a one-off home is to be generous — but they are non-negotiable floors, and they matter enormously where a tight backland or infill plot is pushing the house to be small.

Daylight and outlook are the other decisive amenity tests, and they cut two ways: the light and outlook the new house gives its own occupiers, and the light and outlook it takes from its neighbours. For the new home, the council expects habitable rooms with genuine natural light, real outlook (not a blank wall a metre away) and privacy. For the neighbours — the far more common battleground on a tight Wandsworth plot — the council assesses whether the new house would harm the daylight and sunlight reaching surrounding windows, overshadow gardens, create a sense of enclosure, or introduce overlooking. A daylight and sunlight assessment against the recognised BRE guidance is frequently needed, especially on backland and infill sites where the new house sits close to existing homes.

This is precisely where contemporary design earns its keep. A modern, site-specific approach — careful placing and sizing of glazing, roof forms that step away from boundaries, obscured or high-level glazing where privacy demands it, single-storey elements or set-backs near sensitive boundaries, and a plan that puts habitable rooms where the light is — resolves the space and daylight standards far better than a boxy, maximised design. We test the design against the space standard and model the daylight, both to and from the neighbours, from the very first sketches, so the house we submit is one that meets the standards and answers the amenity objections before they are raised.

One of the most common routes to a contemporary new house in Wandsworth is the replacement dwelling: demolishing an existing house — often a dated, poorly built or unloved twentieth-century property — and building a better, modern home in its place. This is frequently the most secure route in planning terms, because the principle of a house on the plot is already established: there is a dwelling there, and you are proposing another. The planning argument therefore shifts from 'should there be a house here?' to 'is this the right replacement house, in the right place, at the right scale, with acceptable impacts?'

That does not make it automatic. A replacement dwelling is still a full planning application, and it is assessed against the Local Plan's design, character and amenity policies. The council will look closely at the scale, height, footprint and massing of the new house compared with the one being replaced and with the surrounding context: a replacement that is dramatically larger, taller or bulkier than its predecessor and its neighbours — that overdevelops the plot or harms neighbouring amenity — will meet resistance, even though the principle of a dwelling is accepted. The design-led approach means a well-judged, contextual contemporary home can often be somewhat larger and very different in style from what it replaces, provided it sits comfortably on the plot and among its neighbours; but the increase has to be justified by good design, not simply grabbed.

The key design disciplines on a replacement dwelling are therefore about the relationship to the site and the neighbours. We establish the established building line and how the new house should sit relative to it; the appropriate height and roof form relative to adjoining houses; separation distances and the treatment of boundaries to protect neighbours' daylight, outlook and privacy; and the plot coverage and garden retention the policies and character expect. A contemporary design is often ideal here precisely because it can respond intelligently to all of these constraints — stepping its massing, controlling its glazing, using materials that sit well in the street — rather than reproducing a generic house.

There are practical dimensions too. Demolishing the existing house has its own requirements (see the demolition and party wall section below), the ground conditions and any existing foundations have to be understood before designing the new structure, and any trees on or near the plot — common on Wandsworth's leafier plots and often protected — heavily influence where and how the new house can be built. We handle the replacement dwelling as a single coordinated project: the demolition strategy, the site and neighbour analysis, the contemporary design, and the structural and services design of the new home, all driven through one full planning application and into construction.

The harder — and often more valuable — new-house opportunities in Wandsworth are backland plots, garden plots and infill gaps. A backland plot is land behind existing houses, typically an oversized rear garden or a plot accessed by a narrow drive; a garden plot is the subdivision of an existing garden to create a new building plot; an infill plot is a gap in an otherwise continuous frontage — a corner, a former garage, a side space between houses. These are where a lot of the borough's remaining single-house potential lies, and where the principle of development is most contested, because they raise the concern the planning system calls 'garden grabbing': the incremental loss of gardens and the erosion of the spacious, green character that defines much of suburban Wandsworth.

National policy expressly allows councils to resist inappropriate development of residential gardens where it would harm the character of an area, and Wandsworth's Local Plan and its residential character guidance apply that principle. So on a backland or garden plot, the first battle is the principle itself: can a new dwelling acceptably go here at all, given the character of the block, the pattern of gardens and building lines, and the amenity of the surrounding houses? The classic objections are cramped, contrived layouts that ignore the established pattern of development; harmful loss of garden land and greenery; poor access and parking down a narrow drive; overlooking and loss of privacy for the houses the new home sits behind or beside; and a new dwelling with inadequate amenity space or outlook of its own.

Winning consent on these plots is a design problem as much as a policy one, and it is where contemporary, site-specific design is most powerful. A backland house that genuinely responds to its constraints — a single-storey or low, courtyard-based form that sits below neighbours' sightlines; roof lights and carefully placed, obscured or high-level glazing that gain daylight without overlooking; a plan that turns inward to a private courtyard garden rather than out over the neighbours; a green roof and retained planting that soften the loss of garden — can overcome objections that would sink a conventional two-storey box. Some of the most admired new houses in inner London are exactly these hidden, contemporary backland homes, precisely because contemporary design was the tool that unlocked an impossible-looking plot.

We approach backland, garden and infill plots with an honest feasibility assessment first, because some simply will not support a house and it is far cheaper to know that early. Where the plot does have potential, we design to the character and amenity policies from the outset — establishing acceptable separation distances, protecting neighbours' light and privacy, retaining trees and greenery, and giving the new home genuine, private amenity — and we frame the application around exactly the objections we know the council and neighbours will raise. On the hardest plots, Wandsworth's pre-application advice is often worth taking, to test the principle before committing to a full scheme.

With the plot type and the principle settled, the design of the house itself is where a contemporary approach pays off — architecturally and in planning terms. Good contemporary house design in Wandsworth is not about a signature style imposed on every site; it is about a rigorous, site-specific response. The form and massing are shaped by the plot's boundaries, the neighbours' light and privacy, the building line and the roofscape of the street; the glazing is placed and sized to bring daylight and frame views without overlooking or overheating; the plan is organised around modern living — connected, flexible living space, a strong relationship to the garden or courtyard, generous storage, and quiet, warm, private bedrooms; and the materials are chosen to sit well in their setting while reading as unmistakably of today.

Light is the organising idea of most successful contemporary homes, and it is doubly important in Wandsworth because daylight is both an amenity the design provides and a constraint the neighbours impose. We plan the house so that habitable rooms face the best light and outlook, use roof lights and clerestory glazing to bring light deep into a plan on a tight plot, and exploit double-height spaces, courtyards and light wells where the site allows. On constrained backland and infill plots these devices are often the difference between a dark, unlettable home and a bright, desirable one — and between a scheme that harms neighbours' light and one that protects it.

The relationship to outside space is the other defining feature. Contemporary houses in the borough typically dissolve the boundary between inside and out — sliding glazed walls onto a terrace or courtyard, level thresholds, framed garden views — while still providing the private amenity space the Local Plan expects for the new home. On plots where a conventional garden is impossible, we design in courtyards, roof terraces and green roofs that provide amenity, soften the development's impact on the character of the area, and help with biodiversity and drainage. Materials are chosen not just for appearance but for how they weather, how they perform thermally, and how they read against the brick, render and stucco of the surrounding streets — often brick and timber, crisp render, standing-seam metal, or large-format glazing in slim frames, used with restraint.

Crucially, we design the architecture and the technical performance together. The same moves that make a contemporary house beautiful — the glazing, the orientation, the form — are the moves that determine its daylight to neighbours, its energy performance, its overheating risk and its buildability. Designing them in isolation produces the classic problem of a striking drawing that fails on daylight, overheats in summer, or cannot be built as drawn. Designing them together, as we do, produces a house that is at once the home the client wants, a compliant planning proposal, and a buildable, comfortable, efficient building.

A new house is a complete structure built from the ground up, and its structural design is fundamental — not an afterthought bolted on once the architecture is fixed. Crown designs the structure alongside the architecture, so the ambitious contemporary moves that make the house — the large glazed openings, the cantilevers, the open-plan living space with few internal walls, the roof terraces — are engineered to work from the first sketch rather than discovered to be impossible later. On a bespoke house the structure and the architecture are inseparable, and coordinating them is one of the biggest advantages of a single team.

It starts underground. Every new house needs foundations designed for its actual ground conditions, and Wandsworth's geology varies across the borough — river gravels and alluvium near the Thames and the Wandle, London Clay over much of the higher ground — each with different implications for foundation type and depth. London Clay in particular is shrinkable and highly sensitive to nearby trees, whose roots draw moisture from the ground and cause seasonal movement, so foundations near the borough's many mature and often protected trees usually have to be deeper or specially designed. A site investigation to establish the ground conditions, the water table and any contamination (common on former industrial and riverside land) is the starting point for the foundation design.

Above ground, the frame follows the architecture. A contemporary house may be built in loadbearing masonry, in a timber frame (increasingly attractive for its speed and low embodied carbon), in steel where large open spans and glazed openings demand it, or in a hybrid of these — and the choice is driven by the spans, the openings, the site access and the performance targets. Large expanses of glazing and open-plan spaces mean loads have to be carried on beams and columns rather than walls, cantilevers and upper floors have to be designed to control deflection and vibration, and the whole frame has to be tied together to resist wind and stay stable. Basements — common on constrained inner-London plots where owners dig down for extra space — are a specialist structural exercise in their own right, involving retaining walls, waterproofing, underpinning of neighbours and careful control of ground movement, and Wandsworth (like several inner boroughs) scrutinises basement development closely.

Because we engineer the structure in-house alongside the design, the drawings that go to building control and to your contractor are genuinely coordinated: the structural grid, the foundations, the frame, the openings and the floor and roof build-ups all align with the architecture and the services. That coordination is what avoids the expensive site surprises — the beam that clashes with a duct, the foundation that has to be redesigned around a tree root, the opening that turns out to need a bigger steel — that plague new houses designed by separate, uncoordinated consultants.

A new house is only as good as the services that make it comfortable, healthy and cheap to run, and on a contemporary home — typically highly glazed, well insulated and airtight — the mechanical and electrical (MEP) design is central rather than incidental. Crown coordinates the building services with the architecture and the structure, so the heating, ventilation, hot water, drainage, power, lighting and controls are designed into the house from the start, with the space, routes and provision they need, rather than squeezed in afterwards where they compromise the design or fail to perform.

Heating and hot water are increasingly delivered by low-carbon systems as the regulations move decisively away from fossil fuels. A modern new house in Wandsworth is very likely to be designed around an air-source heat pump rather than a gas boiler, paired with underfloor heating that suits a heat pump's lower flow temperatures and works well with open-plan contemporary interiors. That choice has real design consequences — space for the heat pump and a hot-water cylinder, acoustic siting of the external unit to protect neighbours, and underfloor heating build-ups that affect floor levels and structure — all of which we resolve as part of the integrated design.

Ventilation is the quiet make-or-break of a well-built contemporary house. As homes become more airtight to save energy, they need controlled, designed ventilation to stay healthy and avoid condensation and overheating — typically mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), which supplies fresh air and recovers heat from the air it extracts. MVHR needs ductwork routed through the structure, plant space, and careful design to work quietly and efficiently, so it has to be planned alongside the frame and the architecture, not added later. Overheating is a growing concern for glazed contemporary homes and is now assessed under the Building Regulations, so shading, glazing specification, orientation and ventilation are designed together to keep the house comfortable in summer as well as warm in winter.

The rest of the services complete the picture: a drainage design that connects foul and surface water appropriately (and manages surface water sustainably — see below); an electrical design with adequate power, well-planned lighting and provision for electric-vehicle charging; water supply and, increasingly, water-efficiency measures; and smart controls that let the occupiers run an efficient home simply. Designing all of this in-house alongside the architecture and structure is what produces a house that is not only handsome and consented but genuinely comfortable, efficient and future-proof to live in.

Every new house must demonstrate compliance with the energy and carbon requirements of the Building Regulations, and this is one of the areas moving fastest. New dwellings are currently assessed under Part L of the Building Regulations in its 2021 edition, which was a significant uplift on the previous standard — requiring around a 31 per cent reduction in carbon emissions over the old regime — and pushing new homes towards better fabric, more efficient services and low-carbon heating. Compliance is demonstrated through an energy calculation for the dwelling using the government's Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP), which produces the design-stage and as-built energy assessment and the Energy Performance Certificate.

The direction of travel is the Future Homes Standard, the government's flagship policy to make all new homes 'zero-carbon ready' — highly efficient, heated without fossil fuels (in practice, by heat pumps and other low-carbon systems), and ready for a decarbonising electricity grid so that they become genuinely zero-carbon over time without further work. The Future Homes Standard represents a further, substantial uplift to Part L, with more demanding fabric and airtightness targets and the effective end of gas heating in new homes, and it is assessed through an updated SAP methodology (with a more precise Home Energy Model on the way). It is being introduced through the Building Regulations with transitional arrangements, so exactly which standard applies to a given house depends on the timing of its building-control application and start on site.

For a contemporary house, all of this is opportunity rather than obstacle, because the fabric-first, low-carbon approach the regulations demand is exactly the approach that produces a comfortable, cheap-to-run modern home — and it aligns naturally with the sustainability policies in the Wandsworth Local Plan and the London Plan, which push for energy-efficient, low-carbon development and (on larger schemes) for measurable carbon reductions and sometimes whole-life carbon assessment. We design to the applicable energy standard from the outset: a well-insulated, airtight fabric; carefully specified glazing that balances daylight against heat loss and overheating; a heat pump and MVHR; and, where appropriate, solar photovoltaic panels — so the house meets its regulatory targets and is genuinely efficient in use.

Getting the energy strategy right early is not just a compliance exercise; it shapes the architecture. Insulation thicknesses affect wall and roof build-ups and therefore internal dimensions; airtightness affects detailing and construction sequence; glazing ratios affect both daylight and heat balance; and plant needs space and routes. By designing the energy strategy alongside the architecture, structure and services, we avoid the common trap of a house designed for looks that then cannot meet its energy targets without ugly, expensive retrofitting of the design at the last minute.

A new house creates new demands on drainage and new areas of hard surface, and how it manages water is both a Building Regulations requirement and a significant planning consideration in Wandsworth. The borough has real flood-risk exposure — from the tidal Thames along its northern edge, from the River Wandle, and from surface-water flooding on its lower-lying ground — so the council and the drainage authorities pay close attention to how a new development handles both foul and surface water. Getting the drainage strategy right is essential to both consent and a house that works.

Foul drainage — waste water from the house — normally connects to the public sewer, and the design has to establish that there is capacity and a viable connection, with levels and, where the ground falls the wrong way, pumping worked out. Surface-water drainage — rainwater from roofs and paving — is where the modern expectation is most demanding. National and London policy require new development to manage surface water sustainably, following the drainage hierarchy: reuse or infiltrate rainwater into the ground where possible, then attenuate and release it slowly, and only discharge to the public sewer as a last resort and at a restricted rate. This is the principle of sustainable drainage systems (SuDS).

For a contemporary house, SuDS are best designed in from the start and can genuinely enhance the architecture: green or brown roofs that hold and slow rainwater (and boost biodiversity and insulation); permeable paving to driveways and terraces; rain gardens and planted areas that absorb runoff; and, where needed, below-ground attenuation tanks or soakaways that store water and release it slowly. On tight plots with little permeable ground, and on the borough's clay soils where infiltration is poor, attenuation and controlled discharge often do the heavy lifting, and the calculations have to demonstrate that the new house does not increase flood risk elsewhere. Where the plot is in a flood-risk zone, a flood risk assessment is required and the design has to respond — with finished floor levels, resilient construction and safe access all considered.

We design the drainage and SuDS strategy as part of the integrated scheme, coordinated with the landscape, the structure and the levels, so it satisfies the planning policies, the Building Regulations and the drainage authorities, and so the sustainable-drainage features are a deliberate, attractive part of the house rather than an awkward add-on. On a borough as sensitive to flooding as Wandsworth, a credible drainage strategy is a real part of winning consent.

Many new houses in Wandsworth — especially replacement dwellings — begin with demolition, and building a new house on a tight urban plot inevitably means building right up against neighbours. Both bring their own legal and practical requirements that have to be handled properly, because getting them wrong causes delay, dispute and cost. We build these steps into the project from the start so they do not become last-minute obstacles.

Demolition of an existing building is itself a form of development. For most ordinary houses, demolition requires a prior-approval application to the council covering the method of demolition and the restoration of the site, submitted before work starts; and in a conservation area — of which Wandsworth has forty-six — the demolition of a building can require planning permission (conservation-area consent having been folded into the planning system), so you cannot assume you may simply knock down a house in a protected area. Where the building is listed, demolition or substantial alteration needs listed building consent. We establish the correct demolition consents for your specific plot as part of the feasibility, so the programme is realistic and lawful.

The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 governs building work that affects shared walls and structures and excavation near neighbours' buildings, and it applies squarely to most new houses on tight plots. If you build on the line of junction with a neighbour, cut into or build off a party wall, or excavate for foundations within three metres of a neighbouring structure (and to a lower depth than its foundations) — or within six metres in some cases — you must serve the appropriate party wall notices on the affected neighbours before starting, and reach agreement or appoint surveyors to settle a party wall award. This is separate from planning permission and does not depend on it, and it protects both you and your neighbours; ignoring it can bring work to a halt. We flag the party wall obligations early and coordinate with a party wall surveyor so the process runs alongside the design rather than derailing the build.

Building close to neighbours also raises practical construction issues that a good design anticipates: protecting adjoining buildings during excavation and foundation work (particularly for basements and on shrinkable clay near trees), managing site access on constrained plots and down narrow backland drives, controlling noise, dust and construction traffic to keep neighbours (and the council) onside, and sequencing the work so the new house can actually be built with the access and space available. We consider buildability and neighbour impact as part of the design, not as someone else's problem for later, because on a tight Wandsworth plot the constructability of the scheme is as real a constraint as the planning policies.

A new house creates net additional floorspace, and net additional floorspace is what triggers the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) — a charge, calculated per square metre, that funds the infrastructure needed to support development. In Wandsworth two CILs apply and are added together: the borough's own Wandsworth CIL, set by the council's charging schedule, and the Mayoral CIL, set by the Mayor of London to help fund strategic transport. Both are charged on the net new floorspace your development creates, and both are index-linked so the rates rise over time; the exact figure depends on the size of the house and where in the borough it sits, and it becomes payable once you commence development.

The Wandsworth CIL rate for residential development varies by location, reflecting differences in development values across the borough — with a standard residential rate across most of Wandsworth and substantially higher rates in the high-value Nine Elms opportunity area, and a nil rate applied in the Roehampton regeneration area to support viability there. The Mayoral CIL adds a further per-square-metre charge on top. For a replacement dwelling, it is the net increase in floorspace over the (recently in-use) building being replaced that is charged, not the whole new house — a distinction worth thousands of pounds — and there are important reliefs, most notably self-build exemption for someone building their own home to live in, which can remove the CIL liability entirely if the strict procedural steps are followed correctly and on time.

The self-build exemption is a good example of why the CIL process has to be handled with care. It is available to individuals building a house they will occupy as their main residence, but it must be claimed before work starts, using the correct forms and in the correct order, and the exemption can be lost — with the full charge falling due — if the procedure is not followed, if the house is sold within three years, or if a commencement notice is missed. We make sure the CIL forms, notices and any exemption claims are submitted correctly and on time, because a missed step on CIL is one of the more painful and avoidable ways to lose money on a self-build.

Larger schemes — more relevant to developers subdividing plots or building several homes than to a single house — can also attract planning obligations under a Section 106 agreement, for example contributions towards affordable housing or local infrastructure, and Wandsworth's affordable housing requirements were strengthened in a 2026 partial review of the Local Plan (raising the requirement on major schemes). A single new house is usually below the thresholds that trigger affordable housing, but where a scheme is larger we factor any Section 106 obligations into the feasibility from the start so they do not surprise the viability later.

A new-house project produces a lot of information across its life, and organising it into the right packages at the right time is part of delivering it well. We work broadly to the RIBA Plan of Work stages, so you always know what stage you are at and what you are paying for: feasibility and site appraisal; concept design; developed (spatial) design and the planning application; technical design and the building-regulations and construction information; and support through construction. Each stage produces a defined set of drawings and documents.

At the planning stage, a full application for a new house needs a comprehensive package: an accurate measured survey and site plan; existing and proposed drawings — floor plans, elevations, sections and roof plans — showing the new house in full, with room and floor areas annotated so the council can check them against the space standard without scaling off the drawing; a location plan; and the supporting documents that carry the argument. Those typically include a design and access statement setting out how the design responds to the site and the Local Plan policies; a planning statement addressing the policy tests; and, depending on the plot, a daylight and sunlight assessment, an arboricultural (tree) report and method statement, a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy, a transport or parking statement, an ecology or biodiversity assessment, and heritage input where the plot is in or near a conservation area.

Once permission is granted, the project moves into technical design, where we produce the building-regulations and construction information: the detailed architectural drawings and specifications; the structural drawings and calculations for the foundations, frame and floors; the drainage and SuDS design; the energy and SAP assessment; and the coordinated services (MEP) information. This is the package your contractor and the building-control body need to actually build the house, and because we produce the architecture, structure, drainage and services together, it is genuinely coordinated rather than a set of separate consultants' drawings that contradict one another.

Everything is prepared to be internally consistent and complete, because a coordinated, self-consistent set of information is materially easier to consent, to price accurately, and to build without costly surprises. On a bespoke house, where every junction is one-off, that coordination is worth far more than on a standard-product project — it is the difference between a smooth build and a sequence of expensive site queries.

The process starts with feasibility, and on a new house this stage carries more weight than on almost any other project, because it answers the make-or-break question of whether the plot can take a home at all. We survey the site, check its planning designations, constraints and history, assess the character of the surroundings and the amenity of the neighbours, and test what type and size of contemporary house the plot and the Local Plan can support. This is where we tell you honestly whether the scheme is viable — before you spend money on a full design and application.

On genuinely new plots — backland, garden and infill sites especially, but also ambitious replacement dwellings — Wandsworth's pre-application advice service is often worth using. A written pre-application steer from the council on the principle of development and the acceptable scale and design lets us develop the scheme in the right direction and signals to the eventual case officer that the proposal has been thought through. On more secure plots the pre-application step may not be necessary, and we advise on whether it is worth it for your specific site.

We then prepare and submit the full planning application through the Planning Portal, and manage it through validation, consultation and determination. A householder or minor application has an eight-week target for a decision, though genuinely new dwellings and contested plots frequently take longer, and there will usually be a consultation period during which neighbours and statutory consultees can comment. We respond to the case officer, address consultation points, and negotiate amendments where that will secure approval, aiming for a clean consent (with conditions we can discharge) rather than a refusal and an appeal — though where a refusal is unjustified, we can advise on and pursue an appeal.

Once planning permission is in place, we take the scheme into building regulations and construction. We prepare the technical package, submit it to a building-control body (the council's own building control or an approved inspector), discharge the planning conditions, handle the demolition consents, CIL forms and party wall process, and support you through tendering and construction — inspecting, answering the contractor's queries, and seeing the house through to completion. Because the same coordinated team that secured the consent also delivers the technical design and supports the build, the transition from permission to a finished house is far smoother than on projects where each stage is handed to a different, uncoordinated party.

The cost of designing and building a contemporary new house in Wandsworth spans a wide range, because it depends on the plot, the size and specification of the home, and the complexity of the site — a straightforward replacement dwelling on a level, open plot is a very different proposition from a bespoke backland house with a basement on shrinkable clay near protected trees. We scope our design work to your specific project and give you a clear fee proposal, staged to the RIBA work stages, before we begin, so you know what you are paying for at each stage and can proceed with confidence.

Separate from our design fee, you should budget for the other costs a new house carries. The council's planning application fee is set nationally and depends on the type and scale of application. There are fees for the technical consultants a scheme needs — the site investigation, the arboricultural, daylight, drainage, ecology, transport and heritage assessments as applicable, and the energy/SAP assessment. There is the Community Infrastructure Levy on the net new floorspace (both Wandsworth and Mayoral CIL), unless a relief such as the self-build exemption applies. There is the building-control fee, the party wall surveyors' fees, and, of course, the construction cost itself, which is by far the largest number and depends heavily on the specification and the site. We set all of this out at the outset so there are no surprises.

On timescales, a realistic programme for a bespoke new house runs from months of design and pre-application work at the front, through a planning determination that can take from two months to considerably longer on a contested plot, into the technical design and tendering, and then the construction itself — the build of a whole new house is a substantial programme in its own right, typically many months to well over a year depending on size and complexity. We give you a realistic overall programme for your specific scheme at the start, rather than an optimistic one that unravels.

It is worth being clear about where money is really lost on new-house projects, because avoiding those traps is where good advice pays for itself: on plots bought on the assumption a house could be built when the principle was never going to be accepted; on designs pushed to overdevelop a plot that then get refused and have to be redesigned and resubmitted; on uncoordinated consultants whose clashes surface as expensive variations on site; and on missed CIL steps that forfeit a self-build exemption. Getting the plot, the design, the coordination and the process right first time is the most cost-effective way to build a contemporary house in Wandsworth.

Understanding why new-house applications fail is the best way to make sure yours does not, and on new dwellings in Wandsworth the reasons follow familiar patterns. The most fundamental is the principle of development itself: on backland, garden and infill plots, the council may simply conclude that a new dwelling is unacceptable in that location — because it would harm the established character and pattern of development, represent inappropriate garden development, or introduce a cramped, contrived form of building at odds with its surroundings. No amount of design polish saves a scheme where the principle is refused, which is why we test the principle before anything else.

Where the principle is acceptable, the most common refusal grounds are about impact on neighbours and townscape. Harm to neighbouring amenity — loss of daylight or sunlight, overshadowing, an overbearing sense of enclosure, or overlooking and loss of privacy — is the single most frequent reason a new house near existing homes is refused, and it is especially acute on tight backland and infill plots. Poor design and harm to the character of the area is the other big category: a house that is too large, too tall or too bulky for its plot and context; that ignores the established building line, scale or roofscape; or that simply is not good enough to justify itself under the design-led policies.

Beyond these, new houses are refused for overdevelopment (too much house on too small a plot, with inadequate amenity space or garden retained); for harm to protected trees or failure to demonstrate they can be retained and protected; for inadequate or unsafe access and parking, particularly on backland plots down narrow drives; for unaddressed flood risk or an inadequate drainage strategy; for substandard accommodation that fails the space or daylight standards for its own occupiers; and for loss of biodiversity or failure to meet sustainability and energy expectations. Many of these are avoidable with the right assessment and a design that answers the objection up front.

Our approach is to anticipate every likely reason for refusal and answer it within the application itself: establishing the principle (and testing it at pre-application where the plot is marginal); designing to protect neighbours' daylight, outlook and privacy and demonstrating it with a daylight assessment; responding genuinely to the character and scale of the surroundings; retaining and protecting trees; providing a credible drainage and flood strategy; and meeting the space, daylight and energy standards for the new home. We are honest with you at feasibility if a plot faces an insurmountable problem, because there is no value in submitting an application designed to fail.

Sustainability runs through every part of a new house in Wandsworth, and it is increasingly a planning requirement in its own right rather than an optional extra. Beyond the energy standards already covered, the Local Plan and the London Plan expect new development to be genuinely sustainable — energy-efficient and low-carbon in operation, water-efficient, resilient to a changing climate (including overheating and flooding), and designed with regard to the embodied carbon of its materials. For a contemporary house, these expectations align naturally with good modern design: a fabric-first, well-insulated home with low-carbon heating, sustainable drainage, and materials chosen for durability and low impact.

Trees are one of the most powerful constraints on new houses in leafy Wandsworth, and one of the most common reasons schemes are refused or heavily redesigned. Many of the plots that can take a new house — large gardens, backland sites, corner plots — contain mature trees, and many of those trees are protected by Tree Preservation Orders or by conservation-area status, which means they cannot be felled or heavily pruned without consent and must be properly protected during construction. Trees also constrain the design directly: their root protection areas limit where you can build and dig, and their proximity affects the foundation design on shrinkable clay. We commission an arboricultural survey early and design around the trees that matter, retaining and protecting them and, where appropriate, planting new ones.

Biodiversity is now a formal requirement too. Biodiversity net gain (BNG) obligations require most new development to deliver a measurable net improvement in biodiversity — a defined percentage uplift over the site's pre-development biodiversity value — with limited exemptions. Even where a small householder scheme is exempt or lightly affected, the direction of policy is clearly towards development that leaves a site better for nature than it found it. On a contemporary house this dovetails with the design: green and brown roofs, planted courtyards and rain gardens, native planting, and features for wildlife can be built into the scheme so it satisfies both the biodiversity expectations and the sustainable-drainage strategy while enhancing the home.

We treat sustainability, trees and biodiversity as design generators rather than boxes to tick. Designing them in from the start produces a house that is efficient, resilient, greener and more pleasant to live in — and a planning application that answers the environmental policies convincingly. Retrofitting them at the end, by contrast, tends to produce awkward compromises and weaker applications. On a borough that cares deeply about its green character, getting this right is both good practice and good planning strategy.

Crown Architecture designs and delivers contemporary new houses across Wandsworth and the surrounding boroughs, and we do it as a single, coordinated service: the architecture, the structural engineering and the building services under one roof. On a bespoke new house that integration matters more than on almost any other project, because the design, the structure, the energy strategy and the services are completely interdependent — the glazing that makes the house beautiful is the same glazing that determines its daylight to neighbours, its energy performance and its overheating risk, and the open-plan spaces that make it a pleasure to live in are the ones that have to be engineered to stand up. Design these separately and they clash; design them together, as we do, and the striking drawing is also a buildable, compliant, comfortable home.

We know the Wandsworth planning landscape specifically: the adopted 2023 Local Plan and its design, density and housing-standard policies; the design-led approach the borough applies to optimising sites; the residential character and garden-development concerns that decide backland and infill plots; the forty-six conservation areas and the borough's protected trees; the CIL charging schedule and the self-build exemption; and the flood-risk and drainage sensitivities of a riverside borough. We use that knowledge to give you honest advice at feasibility — whether the plot can take a house, what type and size the site and policies can support, and whether the numbers work — before you commit.

Just as importantly, we are straightforward to work with. We tell you early whether a plot will support a new house and by what strategy, we quote a clear staged fee, and we prepare a coordinated, self-consistent application that a case officer can approve without having to fill in the gaps — with the daylight, character, amenity, tree, drainage and standards arguments answered up front. We design contemporary houses that are genuinely of their site: modern, light-filled and efficient, but rooted in the scale, character and constraints of their particular Wandsworth street or backland setting.

We also stay with the project from the first survey to the finished house. We manage the application through Wandsworth's determination, respond to and negotiate with the case officer, and once consent is granted carry the scheme into the building-regulations and construction information, discharge the conditions, handle the demolition consents, CIL and party wall processes, and support you through tendering and construction. The aim is a single, accountable point of contact from the initial idea to a built, contemporary home — architecture, structure and services designed as one.

If you are considering a contemporary new house in Wandsworth — a replacement dwelling, a backland or garden plot, or an infill home — send us the address and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly whether the plot can take a house, what is achievable, and how to get there.