Custom Build House Plans in Bromley

Both custom build and self build describe the same underlying idea: an individual, or a group of individuals, commissioning a new home to live in rather than buying a house a developer has already designed and built for the open market. The difference between the two is the degree of involvement and support. A self build is the more hands-on version — you take the lead on finding the plot, appointing the design team, arranging the finance and appointing and managing the contractor, and in some cases doing some of the construction yourself. You have the final say on everything, and you carry the risk that comes with that control.

A custom build is the more supported version. Here you work with a developer, a housebuilder or a specialist enabler who takes on some of the heavy lifting — often finding and servicing the plot (providing the road, drainage, water, power and other connections up to the boundary), securing the outline planning consent, helping arrange finance, and managing the construction — while the home itself is still tailored to your requirements rather than picked from a standard range. You get a bespoke house with much of the risk and project-management burden removed, but some decisions will already have been made for you, and you have less absolute control than a pure self builder.

In practice the line between the two is a spectrum, not a hard divide. A great many projects sit in between: you might buy a serviced plot with outline consent (a custom-build style start) and then commission your own architect and builder to deliver the house exactly as you want it (a self-build style finish). What matters is not the label but getting the right professional support for the parts of the project you do not want to do yourself. That is where Crown fits in: we prepare the custom build house plans, run the planning application and coordinate the technical design, so that whether you are leading the whole thing or being supported through it, the design and delivery are in expert hands.

It is also worth knowing that the law does not really distinguish between the two. The Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015 (as amended by the Housing and Planning Act 2016) defines both as houses built or completed by individuals, or associations of individuals, to be occupied as homes by those individuals — the crucial point being that the future occupier has 'primary input' into the final design and layout. That legal definition is what underpins the self-build and custom housebuilding register that Bromley, like every other council, is required to keep, and it is why the register is the natural first port of call for anyone thinking about building their own home in the borough.

Under the Self-build and Custom Housebuilding Act 2015, every local planning authority in England must keep a register of people who want to acquire a serviced plot of land in its area to build their own home, and must have regard to that demand when exercising its planning, housing, land-disposal and regeneration functions. The London Borough of Bromley keeps exactly such a register, and joining it is a sensible first step for anyone serious about a custom build or self build in the borough — it costs you little, it signals demand to the council, and it can help you find or be pointed towards suitable plots.

Bromley's register, in common with the national framework, is divided into two parts. Part 1 is for applicants who meet the full eligibility criteria and, critically, satisfy a 'local connection test' — broadly, you must be aged eighteen or over, be a British, EEA or Swiss citizen, be genuinely seeking to acquire a serviced plot in Bromley to build a home to occupy as your sole or main residence, and demonstrate a connection to the borough (with an exception for serving and recently serving members of the regular armed forces). Entries on Part 1 count towards the number of serviced plots the council has a duty to permission. Part 2 is for applicants who want to be on the register but do not meet all the Part 1 criteria; those entries do not count towards the plot requirement, but the council must still have regard to them.

The distinction matters because of the duty that sits behind the register. A council must grant enough suitable development permissions for serviced plots to meet the demand shown on Part 1 of its register within a defined base period. In a borough like Bromley, where developable land is genuinely scarce and much of the area is protected, meeting that duty is a real challenge — which is part of why self-build and custom-build plots do not come forward in large numbers here, and why the plots that do appear are worth pursuing seriously. Being on the register is how you make your demand count towards that duty.

We are happy to explain how the register works and how it fits with your project, but joining it is genuinely straightforward and you can do it directly with the council. What we add is everything that comes after: once you have a plot in mind — whether found through the register, on the open market, or as a back-garden or replacement-dwelling opportunity — we assess whether it can actually be built on, design the house, and run the planning and technical process. The register opens the door; the house plans and the application are what get you through it.

Bromley is a place of two characters held in one boundary. On one hand it is a busy, well-connected outer-London borough with a major metropolitan town centre and a string of suburban centres — Beckenham, Orpington, Penge, Chislehurst, West Wickham, Petts Wood — that grew up along the railways in the late Victorian and Edwardian decades and boomed between the wars. On the other hand it is, quite literally, where London meets the Kent countryside: it is the largest London borough by area, covering nearly fifty-nine square miles, and something like sixty per cent of it is protected green belt or Metropolitan Open Land, with more farmland than any other borough in the capital. That contrast — dense railway suburb wrapped around genuine open country — is the essential fact about building here.

The town of Bromley itself is ancient. Its first recorded charter dates to 862 CE, and from early times the bishops of Rochester were lords of the manor, residing at Bromley Palace from Norman times until the nineteenth century; the palace building that survives, rebuilt in 1775, now serves as the borough's civic centre. The modern London Borough of Bromley was created in 1965 by amalgamating the former municipal borough of Bromley with Beckenham, Penge, Orpington and part of Chislehurst and Sidcup — which is why the borough today reads as a federation of distinct suburban towns and villages rather than a single monolithic place, each with its own centre, character and conservation areas.

Its landmarks are extraordinary for a suburb. At Downe, on the borough's rural southern edge, stands Down House, the Grade I listed home where Charles Darwin lived from 1842 until his death in 1882 and wrote 'On the Origin of Species'; it is now a museum, and the surrounding landscape is protected precisely because of its association with him. At Sydenham, the Crystal Palace — re-erected on the hilltop after the Great Exhibition of 1851 and destroyed by fire in 1936 — gives its name to a park, a district and the famous television transmitter. Chislehurst Caves, a labyrinth of chalk and flint workings, served as a wartime air-raid shelter and concert venue. And Biggin Hill, on the high ground to the south, was one of the most important RAF fighter stations of the Battle of Britain and remains a working airport today.

For a custom build or self build, this context is not decoration — it is planning-relevant at every turn. A new home near Downe or on the rural fringe faces the strongest green belt and landscape protections. A plot in one of the many conservation areas — Bromley recently adopted fresh appraisals for Shortlands Village, Bromley Town Centre, The Covert, The Thrifts and Chislehurst Road, among a long list — faces heritage and character tests. And a back-garden or infill plot in a leafy inter-war suburb faces the council's careful protection of the spacious, low-density streetscape that defines so much of the borough. Understanding which part of Bromley your plot sits in, and what that means for what you can build, is the very first thing we establish.

Yes — almost always, and in full. Building a brand-new dwelling is not something you can do under permitted development. Permitted development rights let existing homeowners make certain changes to a house they already have — extensions within limits, loft conversions, outbuildings — but they do not allow the creation of a new, separate dwelling on a plot. A genuinely new house, whether on an empty plot, in a back garden, on the site of a demolished building, or as a replacement for an existing dwelling, requires a formal grant of planning permission from Bromley Council before it can be built.

There are two forms that grant can take. An outline planning permission establishes the principle of building a house on the site and can leave the detail (the 'reserved matters' — appearance, landscaping, layout and scale) to be settled later; it is often how a plot is brought to market for custom build, because it de-risks the site for a buyer. A full (or detailed) planning permission settles everything at once — the principle and all the detail — and is what most self builders and custom builders ultimately need in order to start on site. Many projects run outline-then-reserved-matters; many go straight to a full application. We advise on which is right for your plot and your timescale.

The application is judged against the development plan — for Bromley, that means the Bromley Local Plan (adopted 16 January 2019) together with the London Plan (2021), read alongside national policy in the National Planning Policy Framework. Unlike a permitted-development prior approval, where the council can only assess a fixed list of matters, a full or outline application for a new house is assessed against the whole of that policy framework: the principle of development on the site, the design and its relationship to local character, the standard and size of the accommodation, residential amenity for the new occupiers and the neighbours, highways and parking, trees and landscape, drainage and sustainability, and — where relevant — green belt, heritage and biodiversity. That breadth is why the design and the supporting case matter so much.

The single most important consequence of all this is that you should never buy a plot in Bromley on the assumption that a house can be built on it. Whether a plot is developable, and what could be built there, depends entirely on where it sits in the borough's policy geography — inside or outside the green belt, in or out of a conservation area, subject or not to garden-land and character constraints. We strongly recommend a feasibility appraisal before you commit to a plot, and where a plot is being sold without consent we will tell you honestly whether we think permission is achievable, and for what.

The Bromley Local Plan, adopted on 16 January 2019 as the statutory development plan for the borough, sets the framework against which a new house is judged, and its central preoccupation is protecting the character that makes Bromley's suburbs so sought-after. The plan and its supporting guidance repeatedly emphasise that new residential development must respect the prevailing pattern, density, scale, spacing, building lines, plot proportions and landscape setting of the area it sits in. In much of the borough that means generous plots, gaps between buildings, mature planting and a green, spacious feel — and a new house that ignores those qualities will struggle.

The plan is supported by detailed design guidance, including the council's Residential Design Guidance and its Urban Design Guide Supplementary Planning Document, prepared to give applicants concrete expectations on how new homes should sit within their surroundings. These documents deal with the things that decide whether a new house reads as a comfortable addition or an intrusion: how far it is set back from the road and from its neighbours, its height and roof form relative to the adjoining houses, the proportion of the plot it covers, the treatment of the front garden and any hardstanding, the position of the private amenity space, and the retention of trees, hedges and boundary planting. We design to that guidance from the outset rather than treating it as a hurdle at the end.

Density is handled through the London Plan's 'design-led' approach rather than through rigid numeric ranges. London Plan Policy D3 asks that a site's capacity be optimised — not maximised — through good design that responds to the existing character and context, so the right number of homes on a plot is the number that a well-designed scheme can accommodate without harming local character or amenity. In practice, for a single custom build or self build house in a suburban street, this means the house should be the right size and form for its plot and its neighbours; on a larger plot capable of more than one dwelling, it means testing what the site can genuinely take rather than squeezing in the maximum.

The council is particularly protective of what it sees as the cumulative erosion of character by small-scale development — the gradual filling-in of gaps, gardens and spacious plots that, individually modest, together change the feel of a suburb. The Local Plan explicitly warns of the risk that inappropriate development of small sites, backland and garden land can adversely affect local character as the supply of such sites diminishes. That mindset is important to understand, because it shapes how the council approaches many custom build and self build proposals: sympathetically where the design genuinely fits, warily where it does not.

A new home in Bromley must meet the nationally described space standard, adopted in London through the London Plan (Policy D6, housing quality and standards). This is a set of minimum gross internal floor areas for homes of different sizes, together with minimum room sizes, storage and ceiling heights, and it applies to new-build dwellings across all tenures. It exists to make sure new homes are genuinely liveable rather than squeezed to the smallest possible footprint, and it is a hard requirement, not a matter of taste.

The headline figures are worth knowing. A one-bedroom, one-person home must be at least 37 square metres (39 with a separate bathroom); a one-bedroom, two-person home at least 50 square metres; a two-bedroom, three-person home at least 61 square metres; a two-bedroom, four-person, two-storey house at least 79 square metres; a three-bedroom, five-person, two-storey house at least 93 square metres; and larger family houses more again. On top of the overall area there are minimum bedroom sizes — a single bedroom at least 7.5 square metres and a double at least 11.5 square metres — a built-in storage requirement, and a floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2.3 metres over most of the home. The London Plan encourages homes to exceed these minimums where possible.

For a custom build or self build this is rarely a constraint — most people building their own home want more space than the minimum, not less — but it is a discipline that shapes the plans and it is checked by the case officer. Every habitable room and the overall gross internal area are annotated on the drawings so the council can confirm compliance without scaling off the plan. Where a plot is tight, or where a scheme proposes more than one dwelling, the space standard becomes a real design driver: it sets a floor below which the accommodation cannot go, and a house or flat that falls short of it will not be approved.

Beyond the raw floor areas, London Plan Policy D6 and the associated Housing Design Standards guidance cover the qualities that make a home pleasant to live in: dual-aspect layouts wherever possible (so rooms get light and air from more than one side), adequate natural light and ventilation, private outdoor amenity space, accessible and adaptable design (a proportion of new homes must be built to the accessibility standards of the Building Regulations), and sensible internal circulation. We design to these standards as a matter of course, because a home that merely scrapes the minimums is not the home most self builders are trying to create.

No factor shapes new-build in Bromley more than its green belt. Roughly sixty per cent of the borough is designated green belt or Metropolitan Open Land, the two strongest open-land protections in the English planning system. Metropolitan Open Land is London's equivalent of green belt and enjoys the same level of protection: within both designations, the construction of new buildings — including new houses — is regarded as 'inappropriate development' and should be refused except in very special circumstances or where the proposal falls within a narrow set of exceptions. That is a genuinely high bar, and it means that a large slice of the borough is effectively off-limits to ordinary new custom build or self build housing.

This is the first thing we check on any plot, because it is often decisive. If a plot lies within the green belt or on Metropolitan Open Land, a proposal for a wholly new dwelling will normally be refused unless it fits one of the recognised exceptions. Those exceptions are limited: the most relevant to self and custom builders are the replacement of an existing dwelling with one that is not materially larger (dealt with in the next section), and — very rarely — the provision of a genuinely exceptional, high-quality isolated home under the special national policy for such houses. Speculative new houses in open countryside, backland behind existing frontages, or in the gaps of green-belt villages are the classic refusals.

The 'very special circumstances' route does exist, but it is demanding and unpredictable. To succeed, an applicant has to show that the considerations in favour of the scheme clearly outweigh both the harm to the green belt by reason of inappropriateness and any other harm — a balance the courts and planning inspectors interpret strictly. Personal circumstances, housing need in the abstract, and a desire to build one's own home are almost never enough on their own. We are candid about this: if your plot is in the green belt and does not fit a recognised exception, we will tell you that a new house is very unlikely to be permitted, rather than take your money for an application designed to fail.

There is a separate national policy — sometimes referred to by its paragraph number in the NPPF, historically paragraph 79 and 55 and now around paragraph 84 — that allows an isolated new home in the countryside where it is of genuinely exceptional or innovative design, raising the standard of design more generally and being sensitive to its rural setting. It is a real route, and a handful of such houses have been built in green belt and countryside contexts, but it is used sparingly and the design bar is exceptionally high. For most Bromley plots it will not apply, but where a rural site and an ambitious client genuinely align, it is worth exploring — and it is exactly the kind of ambitious, design-led project our combined architecture and engineering team is set up to deliver.

For many people who want to build their own home in Bromley, the realistic route is not an empty plot but a replacement dwelling — buying an existing house or bungalow, demolishing it, and building a new home in its place. This is one of the most common ways a new, bespoke house comes forward in a built-up, land-constrained borough, and it has a particular advantage in the green belt: the replacement of an existing dwelling is one of the recognised exceptions to the general rule against new buildings, provided the replacement is not materially larger than the one it replaces.

In the green belt and on Metropolitan Open Land, the size test is the crux. National and London policy allow a replacement dwelling in the green belt where the new building is in the same use and not materially larger than the building it replaces — the intent being to keep development where it already exists rather than let it creep or swell into open land. What counts as 'materially larger' is a matter of planning judgement, usually assessed by reference to floorspace, footprint, volume, height and overall bulk relative to the original lawful dwelling, and the council will scrutinise it closely. A modest, well-proportioned replacement that respects the scale of the original can succeed where a much larger one will not.

Outside the green belt, in the borough's residential suburbs, replacement dwellings are more freely achievable but still judged firmly on character and amenity. The new house has to sit comfortably in the street — the right scale, height, roof form, set-back and plot coverage relative to its neighbours — and must not harm the amenity of adjoining homes through loss of light, overbearing bulk, overlooking or loss of privacy. Bromley's spacious inter-war suburbs, with their consistent building lines and gaps between houses, are sensitive to over-large replacements that break the rhythm of the street, so the design has to be handled with care even where the principle of a replacement is straightforward.

A replacement dwelling also brings demolition into the picture, and with it several practical matters: prior notification of demolition where required, party wall considerations if the existing house is close to or shares a boundary, the safe removal of the old structure, and the need to design new foundations for the ground conditions rather than reusing the old ones. Because Crown handles the architecture, the structure and the services together, we plan the demolition, the new foundations and the new house as a single, coordinated project — which is far smoother than treating the knock-down and the rebuild as separate exercises.

In a borough with little empty land, many custom build and self build homes are built on plots carved out of existing residential curtilages: an infill gap between two houses, a generous side garden, a large back garden with potential road access, or a backland site behind a row of frontage houses. These plots are a legitimate source of new housing — the London Plan actively looks to small sites to help meet housing need — but they are also the plots where Bromley is most protective, so they have to be approached with a clear eye on the council's character concerns.

The Local Plan is explicit that backland and garden land contribute to local character, and that the cumulative, piecemeal development of such sites risks eroding the spacious, green quality of the borough's suburbs. That does not mean these plots cannot be developed — they frequently are — but it means the design has to demonstrate that a new house will sit comfortably without harming the pattern of the area or the amenity of the surrounding homes. A cramped plot, a house that would be overbearing or overlooked, an awkward or intrusive access drive, or the loss of important trees and planting are the classic reasons a backland or garden scheme is refused.

The practical questions on these plots are consistent. Is there a genuine, safe access to the highway, and can it be provided without harming trees, neighbours or the street scene? Is the plot large enough for a house that meets the space standards and has proper private amenity space, without crowding its neighbours? Can the new house be positioned to avoid overlooking and loss of light, front and back? Are there trees with preservation orders, or that are important to the area's character, that constrain the layout? And does the drainage work on what may be a landlocked or low-lying site? We test all of these at feasibility, because the answer determines whether the plot is worth pursuing at all.

Where a garden or backland plot does work, the design premium is high: a well-conceived house on a tucked-away plot, properly screened, sensitively accessed and respectful of its neighbours, can be a genuinely desirable home and a sound project. The difference between success and refusal on these sites is almost always the quality of the design and the care taken over access, amenity and landscape — which is precisely where an experienced architect earns their fee. We are honest at the outset about which garden and backland plots are realistic and which are likely to fall foul of the council's character policies.

The heart of a custom build or self build project is the house itself, and designing it well is a matter of resolving three things simultaneously: your brief — how you want to live, the rooms you need, the way the spaces connect; the plot — its orientation, slope, access, trees, views and boundaries; and the policy context — the character of the street, the space standards, and the borough's design guidance. A good design is the one where all three come together, so the house you want is also the house the plot can take and the council will approve.

We start with a measured survey of the plot and its surroundings — levels, boundaries, trees, existing buildings, the neighbouring houses and their windows — because you cannot design a house that fits without knowing exactly what it is fitting into. From there we develop the layout: the arrangement of living and sleeping spaces, the relationship between inside and out, the orientation for daylight and solar gain, the position of the private garden, and the massing and roof form that will read comfortably in the street. In much of Bromley that means a house with a proper front set-back, a considered relationship to its neighbours, and a scale and materials palette that sit within the local grain rather than shouting against it.

Meeting the space standards is built into this from the start, not checked at the end. Every habitable room is sized to the nationally described standard or better, bedrooms meet the single and double minimums, storage is designed in, and the layout aims for dual-aspect rooms and good natural light throughout. We also design for the accessibility and adaptability standards that new homes are expected to meet, so the house works not just on the day you move in but as your needs change over time — a particular advantage of building your own home rather than buying a developer's standard product.

Because Crown is an architecture and engineering practice, the layout is never a purely architectural drawing that the structure and services then have to catch up with. As the plan takes shape we test it against how the house will actually stand up, how the services will run, where the plant and the drainage will go, and how the home will meet its energy targets — so the design that goes into the planning application is one we already know can be built. That integration is the difference between a beautiful drawing and a buildable house, and it is the core of what we offer self and custom builders.

A new dwelling is a complete structure designed and calculated from the ground up, and getting the structure right is fundamental to both the cost and the buildability of the project. It begins below ground, with the foundations, and the right foundation depends entirely on the ground conditions of your particular plot — the soil type, its bearing capacity, the water table, the proximity of trees, and any history of previous buildings, made ground or contamination on the site. Bromley's geology varies across the borough, from the clays and gravels of the northern suburbs to the chalk of the North Downs in the south, and the foundation solution follows from what the ground actually is, established by a site investigation rather than assumed.

Trees are a particular structural consideration in a leafy borough. Bromley's suburbs are rich in mature trees, and clay soils shrink and swell with the moisture that nearby trees draw from the ground — which can move ordinary shallow foundations. Where significant trees are close to the building, foundations may need to be deeper, or a different type used, to reach beyond the zone of influence, and the design has to reconcile the structural need with the planning imperative to retain the trees that give the area its character. We assess this early, because it materially affects both the foundation cost and the position and design of the house.

Above ground, the superstructure — the walls, floors, roof and any steel or timber frame — is designed to carry the loads of the building safely and efficiently, and to work with the architectural design rather than compromising it. A self build gives real freedom in how the house is built: traditional masonry, timber frame, structural insulated panels (SIPs), insulated concrete formwork (ICF) and hybrid systems each have their advantages for cost, speed, thermal performance and on-site labour, and the choice interacts with the energy strategy, the programme and your appetite for involvement. We advise on the method that suits your project and design the structure accordingly.

Crucially, we design the structure alongside the architecture and the services, not after them. Where the walls, beams, floor zones and roof structure go is settled in coordination with where the rooms, the windows, the drainage runs, the ventilation ducts and the plant need to be — so the structural design supports the house you want rather than forcing compromises onto it late in the day. Producing a fully calculated structural design as part of the same package that secures the planning permission is one of the biggest practical advantages of working with a combined architecture and engineering practice.

A new house needs a complete set of building services — the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems that make it warm, lit, ventilated, powered and watered — and in a modern low-carbon home these are more integral to the design than they have ever been. Gone are the days when a new house simply had a gas boiler bolted into a cupboard; the heating, hot water, ventilation and electrical strategy now shape the fabric of the building and have to be designed in from the start, especially with the Future Homes Standard on the horizon.

The heating and hot-water strategy is the biggest single decision. For a new home built now, and certainly for one that will complete after the Future Homes Standard takes effect, a low-carbon system — most commonly an air-source heat pump, sometimes a ground-source heat pump where the plot allows, or a connection to a heat network where one exists — is the natural choice, paired with a highly insulated, airtight building fabric so the house needs very little energy to heat in the first place. That combination of a low-carbon heat source and an excellent envelope is the essence of a good new home today, and it has to be designed as a whole rather than assembled from parts.

Ventilation has to be designed hand-in-hand with the fabric. As homes become more airtight to save energy, they need a deliberate ventilation strategy to keep the air fresh and prevent condensation, damp and mould — which is why Part F of the Building Regulations is being tightened alongside the energy requirements. Mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), which recovers warmth from the outgoing stale air, is a common and effective solution in a well-sealed new house, and where it is used it must be planned into the structure and the ceiling and floor zones from the outset rather than squeezed in later.

The rest of the services — the electrical installation, provision for an electric-vehicle charge point (now expected on new homes with parking), water supply and pressure, waste and soil drainage, and any renewable generation such as solar photovoltaic panels — all have to be coordinated with the architecture and the structure. Crown designs the services as part of the same integrated package, so the plant space, the risers, the duct runs and the drainage are all accounted for on the drawings, and your new home works as a complete, comfortable, efficient system on the day you move in.

Every new dwelling has to demonstrate compliance with Part L of the Building Regulations — the conservation of fuel and power — and this is one of the areas changing most significantly right now. Compliance is shown through an energy calculation (historically the Standard Assessment Procedure, SAP, now moving to the successor Home Energy Model) carried out for the specific design, which models the fabric, the heating and hot-water system, the ventilation and any renewables to confirm the home will meet the required energy and carbon targets. This has to be done as part of the design, because the results feed back into the specification.

The headline change is the Future Homes Standard. The Government published the final Future Homes Standard and the associated updated Approved Documents on 24 March 2026, with the new Building Regulations requirements coming into force on 24 March 2027 and a twelve-month transitional period following the usual pattern. The standard is designed to ensure new homes produce very substantially lower carbon emissions than those built to earlier standards — with the aim that they become zero-carbon in operation as the electricity grid decarbonises — and in practice it effectively requires a low-carbon heating system (a heat pump, or a heat-network connection) rather than a gas boiler, a high standard of fabric insulation and airtightness, and solar photovoltaic panels on the majority of new homes.

For anyone starting a custom build or self build in Bromley now, the timing matters. A house being designed today will very likely be under construction or completing around and after the Future Homes Standard comes into force, so it makes sense to design to that standard from the outset rather than to a soon-to-be-superseded specification — both to avoid abortive redesign and because a genuinely low-energy home is cheaper to run and more comfortable to live in. We design new homes with the Future Homes direction of travel in mind: a fabric-first approach, a low-carbon heat source, good ventilation and provision for solar generation, so your house is future-proofed rather than built to yesterday's rules.

London adds its own layer on top of Part L. The London Plan's energy policies apply an energy hierarchy — be lean (use less energy through fabric and design), be clean (supply energy efficiently and use low-carbon sources), be green (generate renewable energy) — and expect new development to make real carbon savings, with major schemes required to be net zero-carbon and to address the shortfall through a carbon offset payment where on-site savings fall short. For a single self build house the full weight of these policies is lighter than for a large development, but the direction — highly efficient, low-carbon homes — is exactly the same, and designing to it from the start is the sensible course.

A new house creates new demands on drainage, and how you deal with surface water and foul water is a genuine planning and Building Regulations matter, not an afterthought. Surface-water drainage in particular is now expected to follow a sustainable drainage (SuDS) approach: rather than simply piping rainwater off the roofs and drives into the public sewer, the aim is to manage it as close to source as possible — through soakaways, permeable paving, rainwater storage, green roofs or attenuation — so that the new home does not increase flood risk downstream and, ideally, reduces the rate at which water leaves the site.

Whether soakaways work depends on the ground, which brings the site investigation back into play. On the free-draining chalk and gravel of parts of the borough, infiltration drainage can be very effective; on the heavier clays of other areas it may not, and attenuation with a controlled discharge may be needed instead. The drainage strategy therefore has to be designed for your specific plot, informed by ground investigation and percolation testing, and set out clearly in the application — an unresolved or unrealistic drainage strategy is a common reason schemes are queried or refused.

Flood risk has to be checked as well. Parts of Bromley lie near watercourses — the River Ravensbourne and its tributaries and the Cray among them — and any plot within or near a flood zone requires a flood risk assessment demonstrating that the new home is safe and does not worsen flooding elsewhere, potentially with measures such as raised floor levels or flood-resilient construction. We establish the flood-zone position of your plot at feasibility, because it can materially affect what is buildable and how, and a plot in a high flood-risk zone may face real constraints.

Foul drainage — the removal of waste water and sewage — has to be resolved too, whether by connection to the public sewer or, on the rare rural plot beyond the mains, by a properly designed private treatment system. The connections, the levels, the pipe runs and any pumping all have to be worked out and shown on the drawings, and where a connection to a public sewer is involved the relevant approvals from the sewerage undertaker have to be obtained. We coordinate the full drainage design — surface water, foul water and SuDS — as part of the integrated package for your new home.

Where your project involves clearing the plot — most obviously a replacement dwelling where an existing house is demolished — the demolition itself has to be handled properly. Demolition of a building can require prior notification to the council, and it has to be carried out safely, with attention to any asbestos or other hazardous materials, the protection of neighbouring buildings and boundaries, and the removal and, where possible, recycling of the resulting material. We factor the demolition into the programme and the design so that the transition from the old building to the new one is planned rather than improvised.

The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is a separate legal regime that frequently applies to new-build and replacement projects, and it is easy to overlook. It governs works to walls shared with a neighbour, building on or at the line of a shared boundary, and — importantly for new houses — excavating for foundations within three metres of a neighbouring building (or within six metres in some cases) where the excavation goes deeper than the neighbour's foundations. Where the Act applies you must serve formal notices on the affected neighbours and, if they do not consent, follow the Act's surveyor procedure. This is a civil matter separate from planning permission, but it has to be managed or it can hold up the build.

Neighbours matter in the planning process too, quite apart from the party wall regime. A planning application for a new house is publicised and neighbours can comment, and in Bromley's close-knit, character-conscious suburbs, neighbour concern about overlooking, loss of light, loss of a view, over-development or disruption is common and can influence a decision — particularly on backland, garden and replacement schemes. A design that genuinely respects neighbouring amenity from the start, and, where helpful, some early engagement with the people next door, makes for a much smoother application than one that provokes a wall of objections.

Handling these site matters well is part of delivering a new home, not a distraction from it. We design the scheme to minimise legitimate neighbour concerns, flag where party wall notices and demolition notifications will be needed, and coordinate the sequence of demolition, groundworks and construction so the project runs in a sensible order. The aim is that the practical and legal machinery around the build supports the house rather than tripping it up.

New residential floorspace is liable for the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL), a charge per square metre of net additional floorspace that funds the infrastructure needed to support development. Bromley operates its own borough CIL — the charging schedule was approved for adoption on 19 April 2021 and took effect on relevant permissions determined on or after 15 June 2021 — and on top of the borough charge there is the Mayor of London's CIL (MCIL2), which funds strategic transport infrastructure and applies across the capital, with Bromley falling into one of the mayoral charging bands. Both charges are index-linked, so the figure applied is the adopted rate uplifted to the year permission is granted.

For a self builder, the crucial point is that a self-build exemption exists. Where you are building (or commissioning) a new home to occupy as your own principal residence, you can apply for relief from both the borough and the Mayoral CIL — but the exemption is not automatic, and the procedure is unforgiving. You must claim the exemption and have it granted before you start work, submit a commencement notice before development begins, and then, within the required period after completion, provide the specified supporting evidence (such as proof of occupation and of the self-build finance) and continue to occupy the home as your main residence for a defined period, or the relief can be clawed back with interest. Missing a step in this sequence can leave a self builder facing a substantial CIL bill that could have been avoided.

This is exactly the kind of procedural trap where the right advice pays for itself. We make sure the CIL position is understood at the outset, that any self-build exemption is claimed and granted in the correct order before any work starts, and that the commencement notice and the post-completion evidence are dealt with on time. Getting the paperwork wrong on CIL is one of the more expensive avoidable mistakes in a self-build project, and it is entirely avoidable with the right process.

Beyond CIL, most single self build and custom build houses do not trigger the larger planning obligations that affect big developments — affordable housing contributions and Section 106 agreements generally apply above thresholds well beyond a one-off home. But larger custom-build schemes of several plots, or a house on a site with particular impacts, may attract obligations or conditions (for example, highway works, tree protection, or drainage requirements), and we identify any such requirements early so they are built into the scheme and its costs rather than emerging as a surprise.

A planning application for a new house has to tell the council a clear, complete story: what the plot is now, what you propose to build, and why it complies with policy. We prepare a full, measured and coordinated set of drawings and the supporting documents that carry the case, so the application is complete, internally consistent and easy for a case officer to assess and recommend.

The drawing package for a new dwelling normally includes an existing site survey and site plan showing the plot, its levels, boundaries, trees and the surrounding buildings; a proposed site plan showing the new house in its plot with access, parking, amenity space, refuse and cycle storage; proposed floor plans for each level with rooms and areas annotated against the space standard; proposed elevations showing the appearance and materials; sections showing heights and levels; and, where the context calls for it, street-scene elevations showing the new house alongside its neighbours to demonstrate that it sits comfortably in the street. A location plan completes the set.

Alongside the drawings we prepare the supporting documents the specific site requires. That commonly includes a design and access statement explaining and justifying the design; a planning statement addressing the Local Plan and London Plan policies the scheme engages; and, depending on the plot, a tree survey and arboricultural report, a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy, a heritage statement where the plot is in or near a conservation area or listed building, an ecology or biodiversity assessment, a transport or access statement, and the energy and sustainability information the policies require. We advise on exactly which of these your plot needs, so the application is neither under-supported nor padded with reports it does not require.

Everything is prepared to be consistent across the whole submission — the areas on the plans match the space-standard schedule, the drainage strategy matches the site plan, the tree report matches the layout, the energy statement matches the specification. A coordinated, self-consistent application is materially more likely to be approved than a set of drawings and reports that contradict one another, and it is far easier for a case officer to say yes to. After consent, the same information is developed into the building-regulations and construction drawings your builder and building-control body need.

The process begins with feasibility, and on a new-build project this stage is worth more than on almost any other. We survey the plot, establish exactly where it sits in the borough's policy geography — green belt or Metropolitan Open Land, conservation area, flood zone, tree constraints, the character of the street — and test what could realistically be built there against the Local Plan and London Plan. This is where we tell you honestly whether a new home is achievable on your plot and, if so, what it can be, before you spend money on a full application or, ideally, before you even commit to buying the plot.

For most single houses, the next step is a full (detailed) planning application, or an outline application where establishing the principle first suits the project. We prepare the drawings and supporting documents, submit through the Planning Portal, and manage the application through validation and determination — responding to the case officer, dealing with consultee comments (highways, trees, drainage and others), and negotiating amendments where that will secure approval. The statutory target for determining a straightforward householder or minor application is eight weeks, though a more complex new-build application, or one attracting objections, can take longer, and an extension of time is often agreed.

Bromley offers a pre-application advice service, and on a new-build project it is frequently worthwhile — particularly on a sensitive plot such as a backland or garden site, a replacement dwelling in the green belt, or a plot in a conservation area. A written pre-application steer lets us understand the council's position on the principle and the design before committing to a full submission, develop the scheme in the right direction, and signal to the eventual case officer that the proposal has been thought through. We advise on whether pre-application input is worth it for your specific plot.

Once planning permission is granted, the project moves into the building-regulations and construction stage, which is a separate approval covering the technical standards for the actual building — structure, fire safety, energy (Part L), ventilation (Part F), drainage, accessibility, sound and the rest. Because Crown designs the structure, the services and the energy strategy alongside the planning drawings throughout, the transition from consent to a full construction package is smooth, and the same coordinated team that secured your permission also delivers the drawings your contractor and the building-control body need to build the house.

The cost of a custom build or self build project has several distinct parts, and it helps to see them separately. There is our professional fee for the design, the planning application and the technical work; the council's planning application fee, set nationally and payable on submission; the fees for any specialist reports the plot requires (tree survey, flood risk and drainage, heritage, ecology, ground investigation, energy assessment); the CIL liability, from which a self builder can usually claim exemption if the procedure is followed; and, of course, the construction cost of building the house itself, which is by far the largest element and depends on the size, specification and build method. We scope our own work to your specific project and give you a clear, fixed fee for our part before any drawing work begins.

The construction cost is the number most people most want to understand, and it varies widely with size, specification, build method, ground conditions and the state of the market. A self build gives you real control over that cost — you decide the specification, you can choose a build method to suit your budget and your appetite for involvement, and you are not paying a developer's margin — but it also means the cost is yours to manage. We help you understand the cost implications of the design decisions as they are made, so the house you design is the house you can afford to build, rather than a design that has to be value-engineered into something lesser after the event.

On timescales, a realistic programme runs from feasibility and design (several weeks to a few months depending on the complexity and how settled your brief is), through the planning application (an eight-week target for straightforward cases, longer for complex or contested ones, plus any pre-application stage), into the building-regulations and construction information, and then the build itself — a new house is typically the better part of a year on site, sometimes more. We give you a realistic overall programme for your specific project at the outset, so you can plan your finances, your temporary living arrangements and your expectations around it.

It is worth being clear about where money is really lost on self and custom builds: on plots bought on the assumption they could be built on when they could not; on schemes drawn without regard to the space standards, character policies or green-belt constraints that then get refused and have to be redone; on CIL exemptions lost through a missed procedural step; and on designs that were never coordinated with the structure and services and so have to be reworked on site. Getting the route, the standards and the coordination right first time is the most cost-effective way to build your own home in Bromley.

Understanding why applications fail is the best way to make sure yours does not, and in Bromley the reasons cluster around a few recurring themes. The first and most absolute is the green belt and Metropolitan Open Land: a wholly new dwelling on protected open land, outside the recognised exceptions and without very special circumstances, will be refused as inappropriate development, and no amount of design quality on an otherwise ordinary house will save it. This is why we check the designation before anything else.

The second great theme is character and design. Bromley guards the spacious, low-density, tree-rich quality of its suburbs closely, and schemes are regularly refused for being out of scale or out of keeping with the street — too tall, too bulky, too dense, too close to the boundaries, breaking the building line, over-developing a plot, or eroding the gaps and gardens that give an area its feel. Backland and garden plots are especially vulnerable to this, as is an over-large replacement dwelling that dominates its neighbours. A design that genuinely responds to local character is the single best defence.

The third theme is residential amenity — harm to the neighbours or to the future occupiers. Overlooking and loss of privacy, loss of light or an overbearing impact on adjoining homes, inadequate private amenity space or poor internal layout for the new house, and unacceptable noise are all common refusal grounds. So too are the practical failings: an unsafe or inadequate access, insufficient or intrusive parking, harm to protected or important trees, and an unresolved or unrealistic drainage or flood-risk strategy. Any one of these can sink an otherwise reasonable scheme.

Our approach is to anticipate every likely reason for refusal and answer it in the application itself — the designation checked, the design tailored to local character, neighbour amenity protected, the space standards met, trees and drainage properly addressed, and the whole case set out clearly for the case officer. And 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. That honesty is, in the end, the most valuable thing we offer.

Crown Architecture designs new homes across Bromley and the surrounding boroughs, and we do it as a single coordinated service: the architecture and the custom build house plans, the structural design, and the building-services and energy design all under one roof. On a whole new house that integration is worth a great deal, because the design, the structure, the services, the drainage and the energy strategy are completely interdependent — design them separately and they clash on site; design them together and the house you submit for planning is one you already know can be built, on budget and to standard.

We know the Bromley context specifically: the Local Plan's design and character policies and the Urban Design Guide and Residential Design Guidance that flesh them out; the enormous extent of green belt and Metropolitan Open Land and exactly what that means for new houses and replacement dwellings; the council's protective stance on backland, garden and infill plots; the London Plan's space and design standards; and the CIL and self-build exemption procedure that a self builder has to get right. We use that knowledge to give you honest advice at feasibility — whether your plot can be built on, what it can take, and how to get there — before you commit.

Just as importantly, we are straightforward to work with. We tell you early whether a plot is realistic and what could be built on it, we quote a clear fixed fee for our work, and we prepare a coordinated, self-consistent application that a case officer can approve without having to fill in the gaps. Whether you are a hands-on self builder leading the whole project or a custom builder wanting expert support through it, we tailor our involvement to the parts you want help with — from a feasibility appraisal, through the planning application, to the full construction package.

We also stay with the project after the drawings are done. We manage the application through Bromley's determination, respond to the case officer and consultees, negotiate where that will secure approval, and once permission is granted carry the scheme through to the building-regulations and construction information your contractor and building-control body need — including handling the CIL and self-build exemption paperwork in the right order. The aim is a single, accountable point of contact from the first survey of the plot to a finished, buildable, consented home.

If you are thinking about building your own home in Bromley — whether you have a plot in mind, are considering a replacement dwelling or a garden plot, or are just at the register-and-research stage — send us the details and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly what is achievable and how to get there. The first appraisal and quote are free.