Do I Need Planning Permission for a New Build in Ealing?

Let us give the plain answer before the detail: yes. Building a new home in Ealing — a new house, a pair of houses, a block of flats, or a single dwelling on a plot — needs full planning permission, applied for and granted by Ealing Council before any work starts. There is no permitted development right, no 'class', no shortcut and no exemption that lets you build a new, separate dwelling without permission. That is true whether the plot is empty, whether it is a garden, whether there is an old building to knock down first, or whether there is a garage or outbuilding you want to replace with a home. In every one of those cases you are creating a new dwelling, and creating a dwelling always needs full permission.

The reason is baked into how the planning system works. 'Development' — the thing that needs permission — includes both building work (operational development) and changes in the use of land, and building a new home is development in the most complete sense: you are carrying out substantial building work and, usually, changing the use of the land to residential at the same time. Parliament has granted automatic 'permitted development' rights for many minor works so that people do not have to apply for every small thing, but those rights are deliberately drawn to cover changes to buildings and land that already exist. They do not, and were never intended to, extend to the creation of a brand-new dwelling. A new home therefore falls outside all of them and needs a full application.

This matters because a full planning application is a substantive test, not a formality. When you extend a house under permitted development the council's role is narrow; when you apply to build a new dwelling the council weighs the proposal against the whole of its development plan — the principle of a new home in that location, the design and its fit with local character, the density, the amenity of neighbours and future occupiers, access and parking, trees and biodiversity, drainage and flood risk, and its approach to garden land. Every one of those is a potential reason to refuse, and every one has to be answered in the application. That is why 'yes, you need permission' is really the start of the conversation, not the end of it.

So the useful version of the question is not 'do I need permission?' — you do — but 'can I get it, and how?'. That turns on your specific plot and what Ealing's policies allow there, and it is exactly what we establish at feasibility before any money is spent on a full design. The rest of this page explains the route, the tests your scheme has to pass, and how we get a new-build home in Ealing designed, consented and built.

A new build is a home that did not exist before, created by new construction. In practice we see it in several forms across Ealing. There is the empty-plot new build — a house or flats on a vacant piece of land or an infill gap in a street. There is the garden or backland new build — a new dwelling carved out of the garden of an existing house, either alongside it, behind it, or by subdividing a large plot. There is the replacement dwelling — knocking down an existing house and building a new one in its place. And there is the new home on the site of a non-residential building — replacing a garage, an outbuilding, a workshop or a redundant commercial structure with a dwelling. Each of these creates a new C3 dwelling and each needs full planning permission.

The people who ask us 'do I need planning permission for a new build?' fall into recognisable groups. Some have bought, or are thinking of buying, a plot or a site described as having 'development potential' and want an honest answer about whether that is real before they commit. Some own a large plot — common in Ealing's spacious Victorian, Edwardian and interwar suburbs — and want to release value from part of the garden while keeping their own home. Some want to demolish a modest bungalow or a war-damaged house and build a proper family home in its place. Some are self-builders with a genuine plot and a vision for a one-off house. And some are families building a home for a relative or a smaller home to downsize into.

Whatever the motive, the planning question is the same: can this plot properly accommodate a new dwelling, judged against everything Ealing's Local Plan and the London Plan require? That is not a question about your legal right to build on your own land — owning the land gives you no automatic right to build a home on it — but about whether the council can be persuaded that a new home here is acceptable in planning terms. A new dwelling almost always needs full planning permission, and that application is where the whole thing is won or lost.

The first thing we do on any new-build instruction in Ealing, therefore, is give you an honest feasibility view: whether the principle of a new dwelling is acceptable on your specific plot, what size and form of home it could realistically support, and what the main obstacles will be. A great deal of money and disappointment is saved by establishing that before a full application is designed, because the difference between a plot that can take a home and one that cannot is often not obvious to an owner who knows only their own land. Everything that follows on this page is organised around that central feasibility question.

It is worth understanding why the answer is so firmly 'yes', because it explains the whole shape of a new-build project. Building a new dwelling is 'development' in the fullest sense: it is operational development (the physical construction) and, in most cases, a material change in the use of the land to residential. The General Permitted Development Order, which grants the automatic rights people rely on for extensions, loft conversions, outbuildings and certain changes of use, deliberately does not grant any right to create a new separate dwelling on a plot. The extension rights assume a house is already there to extend; the change-of-use rights assume a building is already there to convert; none of them creates a home where there was no dwelling before.

That means the route for a new build in Ealing is a full planning application, determined by Ealing Council against the whole of the development plan — the adopted Ealing planning policies, the London Plan (2021), and national policy in the National Planning Policy Framework — together with the emerging new Ealing Local Plan as it gains weight through examination. Unlike the lighter-touch 'prior approval' regimes that apply to some conversions of existing buildings, a full application puts everything in play: the principle of a new dwelling in that location, design and character, density and layout, residential amenity for occupiers and neighbours, trees and landscaping, highways and parking, drainage and sustainability, and, on larger schemes, affordable housing and planning obligations.

There are two main routes to that permission, and choosing the right one matters. The first is a full planning application, where you submit detailed drawings of the actual home you intend to build and the council decides the whole thing in one go — the usual route for a single house or a small scheme once feasibility is positive. The second is outline planning permission, where you establish the principle of a dwelling on the site first, sometimes with only the access and the broad scale settled, leaving the detailed design ('reserved matters') to a later application. Outline can be useful for testing whether a plot is developable at all, or for selling a site with the principle established, but for most one-off homes owners go straight to a full application.

One boundary catches people out repeatedly, so it is worth stating plainly: the line between a large extension or an 'annexe' and a new dwelling. If you extend a house so extensively, or subdivide a plot so completely, that you have effectively created a separate self-contained home — its own entrance, its own facilities, its own curtilage, its own household living independently — the council will treat it as a new dwelling requiring full permission, not as permitted-development extension work. Building 'an annexe' or a 'garden outbuilding' that is really a separate house, without permission, is unlawful and can lead to enforcement action and a demand to undo it. We advise on exactly where that line falls before you build.

To understand how a new build is judged in Ealing, you have to understand the borough's character, because that character is the yardstick every new-home application is measured against. Ealing earned the title 'Queen of the Suburbs' — a phrase in use by around 1902 and associated with the borough surveyor Charles Jones, who did so much to shape the town — precisely because of its leafy, spacious, garden-rich residential streets. It was developed and marketed as a country town near London: well connected by rail, but green, generous and orderly, with tree-lined roads and substantial houses set in real gardens. That spaciousness is not incidental to Ealing; it is the essence of what makes it Ealing, and it is exactly what a poorly judged new build risks eroding.

The borough's landmarks reinforce the point. Pitzhanger Manor, remodelled by the architect Sir John Soane in the early 1800s as his own country villa, sits in the beautifully landscaped Walpole Park — historic Grade II-listed parkland at the heart of Ealing, opened to the public in 1901. Ealing Studios, one of the oldest continuously working film studios in the world and the home of the classic Ealing comedies, has been making films here since the early twentieth century. Beyond the town, the borough stretches from Acton and Chiswick's edge in the east through Ealing itself and Hanwell to Southall, Northolt and Greenford in the west, taking in the Grand Union Canal, Horsenden Hill and the Brent River Park — a borough that has always valued its green settings and its distinctive, well-made environment.

Above all, Ealing has Brentham Garden Suburb — an Edwardian garden suburb built between about 1901 and 1915, one of the earliest and most influential planned garden suburbs in the country, designated a conservation area and protected by a comprehensive Article 4 direction that removes virtually all permitted development rights so that even small external changes need permission. Brentham is the physical embodiment of the garden-suburb ideal: houses set in green, generous plots as a deliberate design principle. Across the borough there are around 29 conservation areas covering Victorian streets, Edwardian suburbs, village greens and interwar estates — a very large proportion of Ealing's residential fabric carries some form of special character protection.

For a new-build scheme this context is not background colour — it is the heart of the planning case. In the town centres and along the major corridors, and on the large regeneration sites around Southall, Acton and the Elizabeth line stations, the council directs higher-density housing growth. In the established residential streets and suburbs, a new home is judged mainly on how well it fits the character, density, spacing and grain of the area around it. And in a conservation area, or under an Article 4 direction such as Brentham's, the bar is higher still. Knowing precisely where your plot sits in this pattern is the first and most consequential thing to establish, which is why the location map matters so much on these projects.

Before design, before drawings, before anything, comes the principle: is a new dwelling acceptable on this plot at all? This is the question that decides whether a new-build project is worth pursuing, and it is entirely separate from how good the eventual house is. A brilliant design on a plot where the principle of a new home is unacceptable will still be refused; a modest design on a plot where the principle is sound has a real chance. In Ealing the principle turns on where the plot sits and what policies cover it — the pattern of the area, whether it is a garden, whether it is in a conservation area, whether the site is allocated for development, and whether a new home in that location is what the Local Plan supports.

For an empty or infill plot in an established residential street, the principle is usually about fit: whether a new home there would respect the building line, spacing, scale and character of the surrounding houses, and whether the plot is genuinely large enough to take a dwelling that meets the space standards with proper separation from its neighbours. For a garden or backland plot, the principle is bound up with the borough's cautious stance on developing garden land, which we deal with in detail below. For a replacement dwelling, the principle is generally accepted — you are replacing a home with a home — and the questions move to scale and design. For a plot on an allocated site or a town-centre location, the principle of housing is often positively supported, and the questions are about design, density and mix.

The plot's own constraints feed into the principle too. Trees — often protected, and abundant in Ealing's garden-rich suburbs — can determine whether and where a house can sit. Flood risk, contamination, an awkward or unsafe access, a tight relationship to neighbours, or a heritage setting can each make a plot that looks developable on a map much harder in reality. Establishing all of this early is what separates a plot that can carry a home from one that cannot, and it is not something an owner can reliably judge from their own knowledge of the site.

This is why our first piece of work on any new build is an honest feasibility assessment of the principle. We check the plot against the Local Plan and the London Plan, the conservation-area and Article 4 designations, the tree and flood constraints and the character of the surrounding area, and we tell you plainly whether a new home is achievable, in what form, and what the main obstacles will be. Approaching it the other way round — designing the dream house first and testing the principle later — is the most common and most expensive mistake we see on new builds, and the whole point of feasibility is to avoid it.

A new-build application in Ealing is judged against the council's development plan, which currently comprises the adopted Ealing planning documents together with the London Plan. Ealing's development-management policies require new development to respond to its physical context and to respect the established local character and the pattern of building, spaces, landscape and topography — language aimed squarely at the character and grain questions a new home raises. The London Plan's design policy (Policy D3) requires a design-led approach that optimises the capacity of a site in a way that is genuinely appropriate to its context, which in Ealing's spacious, garden-rich suburbs means fitting the surrounding pattern rather than overriding it.

The policy position is genuinely in transition, and we always check its current status when we advise on a site. Ealing submitted a new Local Plan covering 2024 to 2039 to the government for independent examination on 18 November 2024; the Planning Inspectorate appointed inspectors in December 2024 and examination hearings followed through 2025. The new plan addresses housing supply, density and intensification, tall buildings, town-centre and place-based strategies for the borough's seven town areas, character-led growth and the borough's green assets — all of which bear on where and how new homes are acceptable. Because the weight given to emerging policy increases as the plan advances towards adoption, the precise policy basis for your scheme depends on the plan's status at the time you apply.

Several recurring themes govern new-build schemes specifically, and we frame every application around them. Character and design: the new home must fit the established pattern, building line, spacing, scale and materials of the area. Density and layout: development should optimise site capacity appropriately, with density directed to town centres and well-connected locations and kept in keeping with the grain in established suburbs — the council resists over-development and 'town cramming'. Residential amenity: no unacceptable overlooking, loss of privacy, overshadowing or loss of outlook for neighbours, and proper light, outlook, privacy and garden space for the new home. Access and parking, trees and biodiversity, drainage and sustainability each add their own tests.

In conservation areas and under Article 4 directions — which cover a very large part of residential Ealing — additional heritage and character policies apply, and the presumption against harmful development is stronger. Brentham Garden Suburb, with its comprehensive Article 4 direction and a detailed conservation-area design guide, is the clearest example, but the same care applies across the borough's Victorian and Edwardian conservation areas. Knowing precisely which designations and policies cover your plot is the foundation of a credible application, and it is the first thing we establish so the design and the supporting statements can be built around the tests that actually apply.

A new home in Ealing has to be a proper size, and the standard is set by the London Plan, which applies the nationally described space standard (NDSS) as the minimum internal floor area for new dwellings. The headline figures are: a one-bedroom, one-person home must be at least 37 square metres (39 where it has a bathroom rather than just a shower room); 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 home at least 70; a three-bedroom, five-person home at least 93 over two storeys; and larger homes proportionately more, with minimum bedroom sizes and built-in storage on top. These are floors, not targets.

London adds requirements above the bare national floor areas. The London Plan's housing-quality policy requires a floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2.5 metres for at least seventy-five per cent of the gross internal area — more generous than the 2.3-metre national minimum — which affects the section design and, on a tight site, the overall height of the building. It seeks to minimise single-aspect homes and to avoid single-aspect dwellings that are north-facing or exposed to noise. And it requires private outdoor amenity space — a minimum of five square metres for a one or two-person home, plus one square metre for each additional occupant, with sensible minimum dimensions — so a new home needs a usable garden, terrace or balcony, not a token strip.

For a single detached family house these standards are rarely a constraint — such homes comfortably exceed the minimums — but they become decisive on the plots where new build most often happens in Ealing: tight garden, backland and infill plots, and schemes that split a plot into two or more homes. On those sites, meeting the floor areas, the ceiling height, the dual-aspect preference and the private amenity space at the same time as fitting within the area's plot width, garden depth and spacing quickly shows that a plot supports fewer homes — or a smaller home — than the owner hoped. Testing a realistic, standards-compliant home against the actual plot at feasibility is how we give you an honest answer before you design.

Meeting the standards is also part of making the planning case. A home that meets the NDSS on paper but has poor outlook, a north-facing single aspect, an overlooked garden or an inadequate private amenity space will still struggle, because the London Plan and the Local Plan are looking for genuinely good homes, not just compliant floor areas. We design to both the letter of the space standards and the substance of what makes a good home, because a scheme that ticks the area boxes but feels cramped or dark is neither consentable nor, ultimately, valuable.

A very common Ealing new build is the replacement dwelling — knocking down an existing house (often a tired bungalow, a war-damaged or altered house, or a small home on a large plot) and building a new one in its place. Here the principle is usually the easy part: you are replacing a home with a home, so the council is not being asked to accept a new dwelling where none existed, and the questions move to scale, design, character and amenity. That does not mean a replacement is a free hand — it means the battle is fought on how big, how tall and how well the new house fits, rather than on whether a house belongs there at all.

The key tests for a replacement dwelling in Ealing are scale and character. A new house that is dramatically larger, taller or bulkier than the one it replaces, or than its neighbours, will run into the character and amenity policies even though the principle of a house is accepted. The council looks at how the replacement sits in the street — its height, footprint, building line, roof form and materials relative to the neighbours — and at its impact on neighbouring amenity through overlooking, overshadowing and overbearing bulk. A replacement designed to sit comfortably in the established pattern, taking a modestly increased footprint or a well-handled extra storey where the context allows, is far more likely to succeed than one that maximises for its own sake.

There are also useful nuances that work in a replacement scheme's favour. Because you are demolishing an existing home, the floorspace of the building you knock down (provided it has been in lawful use) can normally be offset against the new floorspace for Community Infrastructure Levy purposes, so you pay CIL only on the net increase — a significant saving on a like-for-like or modest uplift. And because the site is already a residential plot with services, an access and an established curtilage, many of the practical hurdles that dog garden and backland schemes are less acute. We check the planning history and the lawful status of the existing house carefully, because the baseline you are replacing affects both the design comparison and the CIL position.

Where a replacement scheme goes wrong is almost always over-ambition on scale, or a failure to handle the demolition and the neighbours properly. We measure the existing house accurately, design the replacement around a defensible comparison with its neighbours and its predecessor, and handle the demolition, the party wall implications and the tree protection alongside the design. The result is a new home that reads as a natural improvement to the street rather than an intrusion — which is both the consentable outcome and the one that adds the most value.

Where the new build is on garden land, a specific and important piece of policy comes into play. 'Garden-grabbing' describes building new homes on residential garden land, and it drove a lasting change in national planning policy. For years, private residential gardens were treated as 'previously developed' (brownfield) land, which carried a policy presumption in favour of development and encouraged a wave of infill and backland house-building on gardens across suburban England, Ealing included. In June 2010 the government removed private residential gardens in built-up areas from the definition of previously developed land — a change carried through to today's National Planning Policy Framework, which expressly excludes 'land in built-up areas such as private residential gardens' from the brownfield definition.

The practical effect for an Ealing garden scheme is significant. Your garden plot does not benefit from any presumption in favour of development as brownfield land would; the council starts from a neutral or, in sensitive areas, sceptical position, and the proposal has to earn its permission on its planning merits — character, amenity, access, trees, drainage and design. The council can legitimately resist the loss of garden land where it would harm the character of the area or the amenity of neighbours. This does not ban building on gardens — new houses in gardens are still approved where they are genuinely acceptable — but it removed the artificial encouragement that once treated gardens as brownfield.

Backland development — a new house on land behind existing houses, typically deep in a back garden reached down a narrow access — is the most contested form of garden new build and the one Ealing scrutinises most heavily. It tends to introduce a house into the private, enclosed, green interior of a block, with all the problems that brings: overlooking of surrounding gardens and rear windows, loss of the open outlook neighbours enjoy, an awkward or unneighbourly access, and a form that can read as cramped and out of keeping. Backland applications in Ealing are frequently refused, taken to appeal, and refused again, particularly in conservation areas. A backland scheme starts from a difficult position and has to be exceptionally well judged to succeed.

Not every garden new build is a difficult backland scheme, though. Infill and side-garden houses that front the street and complete an established frontage are far easier to make acceptable, because they read as part of the building line and pattern rather than an intrusion behind it. Subdividing a genuinely large plot so that both the existing and new homes keep proper gardens, parking, amenity and separation can also work on the borough's more spacious plots. Whatever the plot type, the discipline is the same: the new home has to sit naturally in the established pattern — its building line, spacing, scale and garden setting — rather than fighting it. We assess each plot type honestly at feasibility and tell you which kind of scheme, if any, your land can support.

Once the principle is settled, the design of the home has to do two things at once: sit comfortably within Ealing's character and constraints, and be a genuinely good place to live that meets the space standards. On the plots where new build most often happens here, the two are usually in tension with the wish to maximise floor area, and the craft of the job is resolving that tension into a house that is both consentable and desirable. We start from the constraints — the plot width, garden depth and spacing the area supports, the trees and their root-protection areas, the neighbours' windows and gardens, the building line, the levels and the access — and design the home within them rather than fighting them.

Massing and height are where character schemes are usually decided. In an established suburb, a new house that matches the ridge height, eaves line, storey height and roof form of its neighbours reads as belonging; one that towers over them, or that pushes a bulky two-storey flank close to a boundary, invites objection. On a garden, backland or infill plot, keeping the built footprint modest, holding a generous garden, maintaining the spacing of the street and setting the house well off the boundaries is often what makes the difference. We model the scheme in three dimensions against its neighbours from the outset, so the massing is right before the detail is drawn.

Internally, we design to the London Plan space standards as a floor, not a ceiling — proper room sizes, adequate storage, sensible circulation, and a floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2.5 metres over most of the home. We prioritise dual-aspect living where the plot allows, arrange habitable rooms to get good light and outlook, and design a private garden or terrace that meets the amenity-space standard and is genuinely usable. Where a plot is tight, a carefully handled roof space or a basement can add accommodation without adding the bulk that would breach the character tests — provided the structure and the neighbours' foundations are properly considered.

Amenity for neighbours is designed in at the same time. We check the distances to neighbours' habitable-room windows, the angle and height of any element close to a boundary, and the potential for overlooking of gardens, and we resolve them with window positioning, obscure glazing, screening, single-storey elements where a two-storey wall would overbear, and sensible orientation. The aim throughout is a home a case officer can look at and see immediately that it respects its neighbours and its context — because a scheme that plainly does that is far quicker and more certain to approve than one that has to be argued round objections.

Building a new home is a complete structural project, from the ground up, and getting the structure right is where a scheme is delivered rather than merely drawn. Crown handles the architecture, the structure and the building services together, so the drawings you build from are coordinated rather than a planning layout that a separate engineer then has to make work. On a new build that integration starts with the foundations, because Ealing's ground conditions and, often, its trees dictate what the foundations have to be — and getting that wrong is one of the most expensive mistakes on a new home.

Much of west London, Ealing included, sits on London Clay, a shrinkable soil that moves with changes in moisture and, critically, is affected by nearby trees, which draw water from the ground. A house built near retained trees on clay needs foundations designed for that condition — typically deeper trench-fill foundations taken below the zone of seasonal movement, or piled foundations with ground beams where trees are close or the clay is highly shrinkable. The foundation design follows a ground investigation (trial pits or boreholes and soil testing) and an assessment of the trees, so the foundations suit what is actually there rather than an assumption. On backland and infill plots there is the added practical problem of getting foundation plant and materials down a narrow access, which shapes the buildable construction method.

Above ground, the frame has to be designed for the actual house. Most new homes in Ealing are masonry — traditional cavity brick-and-block — which suits the suburban context and the planners' preference for materials that match the area, but timber frame and, on some schemes, steel or a hybrid make sense where the design, the programme or a tight access favours them. The structural design covers the loadbearing walls or frame, the floors, the roof structure, the beams over openings, the lateral stability, and any basement retaining structure. Where a basement is part of the scheme — a common way to add space without bulk on a constrained plot — the retaining walls, the waterproofing and the effect on neighbouring foundations need careful design and, usually, a party wall process.

Because we design the structure alongside the architecture, the house you get permission for is the house you can build. The foundation strategy is settled against the trees and the ground before the layout is fixed; the spans and the openings work structurally; the construction method suits the access; and the drawings that go to building control are a coordinated set rather than a planning drawing plus a hopeful note to 'engineer to confirm'. That is the difference between a smooth build and the expensive redesigns that happen when structure is bolted on after planning.

A new dwelling needs a complete set of building services designed from scratch — heating, hot water, ventilation, electrics, water, drainage and increasingly on-site renewable generation — and on a modern new build these are not an afterthought but a central part of the design, because the energy regulations now shape the whole servicing strategy. Crown designs the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) alongside the architecture and structure, so the plant, the risers, the pipe and cable routes and the ventilation all have a proper home in the building rather than being squeezed in at the end.

Utility connections are the first practical hurdle, and they are easy to underestimate. A new dwelling needs its own connections to water, electricity, drainage and telecoms, and on a garden, backland or infill plot those connections may have to be routed a considerable distance from the street, around or past the existing house, and coordinated with the utility companies to a programme that is not always quick. Foul drainage in particular can be awkward — connecting to the public sewer may require a new drain across the plot, careful handling of levels, and sometimes a pumped solution where gravity drainage is not possible. These are exactly the issues that stall a build if they are not designed and priced early.

Heating and hot water are where the biggest change is happening. Under the direction of travel set by the Future Homes Standard and the tightening of Part L, new homes are moving decisively away from gas boilers towards heat pumps — usually air-source heat pumps — or connection to a low-carbon heat network where one exists. A heat pump runs at lower flow temperatures than a gas boiler, so it works best with larger radiators or underfloor heating and a well-insulated, airtight fabric; designing the heating around the heat pump from the start, rather than sizing it like a boiler system, is essential to a comfortable, efficient home.

Ventilation follows from the airtightness, and the rest of the services complete the home. A modern new home is built to be airtight to save energy, which means it needs designed ventilation to stay healthy — typically continuous mechanical extract, or, on higher-performance homes, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR). Overheating is a regulated concern (Part O), so window sizing, shading and purge ventilation are designed in. Then there is a full electrical design with provision for an electric-vehicle charge point where there is parking, the incoming water supply and internal plumbing, and, increasingly, on-site solar photovoltaic generation. We coordinate all of it so the plant space, the cylinder and MVHR location, the riser routes and the external units are designed in from the start — because retrofitting them into a house designed without them is exactly the avoidable cost a coordinated team prevents.

Every new dwelling has to demonstrate compliance with the energy requirements of the Building Regulations, and for a whole new home that is a serious piece of design work, not a tick-box. The current regime is Part L (conservation of fuel and power), assessed through the SAP methodology (the government's Standard Assessment Procedure, now delivered through the Home Energy Model), which calculates the home's predicted energy use and carbon emissions and checks them against targets. A new home has to hit both a fabric-energy-efficiency target and a carbon-emissions target, and the design — insulation levels, glazing, airtightness, heating system and any renewables — has to be shaped to meet them. The same calculation produces the home's Energy Performance Certificate.

The direction of travel is the Future Homes Standard, the government's programme to make new homes 'zero-carbon ready'. It is designed to require new dwellings to produce dramatically lower carbon emissions than homes built to earlier standards — in the order of a 75 to 80 per cent reduction against the 2013 baseline — through a high-performance building fabric, low-carbon heating and on-site renewables. In practice the carbon targets are set at a level that no fossil-fuel boiler — gas, oil or LPG — can meet, so new homes will be heated by heat pumps or heat networks, built to a high-performance fabric, and typically fitted with solar photovoltaic panels. The standard is being brought in as an update to Part L, with the technical detail and transition dates confirmed by government through 2025 and 2026, so the exact requirement for your home depends on when its building-regulations application is made and when it is built.

In practice this means the energy strategy has to be integral to the design from the earliest stage. The fabric comes first — generous insulation, good airtightness and careful thermal-bridging detailing — because a well-built fabric reduces the heat demand that everything else has to serve. Then the low-carbon heating (a properly sized heat pump), the ventilation to keep an airtight home healthy, the measures to prevent summer overheating under Part O, and the on-site renewables. Each of these has architectural consequences — wall thicknesses, window sizes and orientation, plant space, roof area for panels — which is why we design the energy strategy and the architecture together rather than in sequence.

In London there is a further layer: the London Plan's own energy policy expects new homes to follow the 'be lean, be clean, be green, be seen' energy hierarchy and to work towards net-zero-carbon, sometimes with a carbon-offset contribution where on-site zero carbon is not achieved. We prepare or commission the SAP assessment as part of the design so compliance is demonstrated by design rather than discovered at building control, and we advise on going beyond the minimum where it makes sense — a lower-energy home is cheaper to run, more comfortable, more future-proof and, in London, often expected to demonstrate real ambition on carbon. For a client building a home to keep, designing to the coming standard rather than the outgoing one is usually the sensible choice.

A new dwelling creates new demands on drainage — foul drainage for the home's waste and surface-water drainage for the rain that falls on its roofs and hard surfaces — and both have to be designed and, on many sites, positively demonstrated to the council. Surface water in particular is a policy priority: the London Plan and Ealing's policies expect new development to manage rainwater sustainably and to follow the drainage hierarchy, discharging first to the ground (infiltration) where the soil allows, then to a watercourse, and only as a last resort to the public sewer, and always at a controlled rate that does not worsen flooding downstream. Building a home on what was permeable garden or open ground makes this a real design question, not a formality.

That is where sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) come in. On a new home a SuDS strategy might combine permeable paving, soakaways, rain gardens, water butts, green roofs and attenuation storage to slow and reduce runoff, ideally getting as close as possible to the greenfield runoff rate. On Ealing's London Clay, infiltration is not always feasible — clay drains poorly — so the design often relies on attenuation (storing rainwater and releasing it slowly) and a controlled connection rather than a soakaway. Getting the SuDS strategy right early matters because it affects the site layout, the levels and the space you need to set aside, and because inadequate surface-water drainage is a common reason for objections.

Flood risk has to be checked too. Parts of the borough — the River Brent and Grand Union Canal corridors, and areas prone to surface-water flooding — fall within flood zones or areas of higher surface-water flood risk, and a new dwelling on such a site needs a flood risk assessment, may need to follow the sequential and exception tests, and may have to incorporate flood-resilient design and raised floor levels. We check the site's flood status at feasibility, because a flood constraint can affect whether and how a home can be built and is far better known before the design than after.

Foul drainage is usually more straightforward but still needs designing — a connection to the public foul sewer, with the levels, the route across the plot and any pumping worked out and coordinated with the structure so the drains do not clash with the foundations. We design the whole drainage picture — foul and surface water, SuDS and any flood measures — as part of the scheme, and prepare the drainage strategy and calculations the council and building control will want to see, so drainage is answered on the drawings rather than raised as an objection.

Many Ealing new builds — replacement dwellings especially — start with demolishing an existing building, and demolition has its own requirements. Demolition of a whole building usually needs a 'prior notification' to the council (and full consent where the building is listed or in a conservation area), and it has to be carried out safely with proper attention to asbestos, dust, noise and the protection of neighbouring buildings and trees. Where the building shares a boundary or a structure with a neighbour, the demolition and rebuilding can engage the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, which is a separate legal process from planning and must be dealt with in its own right.

The Party Wall Act applies whenever you build on or at the boundary line, excavate near a neighbour's building or wall (within three or six metres, depending on the depth of your foundations), or work on a shared party wall or structure. On a new build this is common: new foundations close to a boundary, a basement dig near a neighbour, or demolition of a wall shared with the house next door. The Act requires you to serve formal notices on the affected neighbours, and if they do not consent, to appoint surveyors to agree a party wall award that governs how the work is done and protects the neighbour's property. It is not part of the planning permission and has to be handled separately, but it is essential to a lawful, dispute-free build — and it is one of the things we flag and coordinate from the start.

Trees are the other pre-build issue that catches people out. Ealing protects trees extensively through Tree Preservation Orders and through the automatic protection that applies to trees in conservation areas, which cover a great deal of the borough. You cannot fell, lop or even work near a protected tree without consent — and 'working near' includes excavating within a tree's root-protection area, which can prevent foundations or a basement where you might want them. Even unprotected trees on or near the site can constrain the build. We assess the trees at feasibility, design the house and its foundations to protect the ones that have to stay, and secure any consents needed, so trees do not become a mid-build crisis.

The common thread is that neighbours and the site's constraints have to be managed alongside the planning application, not after it. Good neighbour relations, proper party wall procedure, careful demolition and real respect for trees are what turn a consented scheme into a built one without disputes, delays or enforcement. We flag all of these at the start and manage the ones that fall within our remit, and point you to the right specialist — a party wall surveyor, an asbestos surveyor, an arboriculturist — for the ones that do not.

A new dwelling creates new floorspace, and new floorspace attracts the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) — a charge levied per square metre of net additional floorspace to fund the infrastructure that growth requires. In Ealing two CILs apply. The Mayor of London's CIL (MCIL2) is charged across the capital to help fund strategic transport such as the Elizabeth line; Ealing falls in the Mayoral middle band (a base rate of £60 per square metre, index-linked and in practice charged at around £69 per square metre in recent years, rising over time). On top of that, Ealing adopted its own borough CIL charging schedule — approved by Full Council on 16 December 2025 and taking effect on 1 March 2026 — so developments granted permission on or after that date are liable for the borough CIL as well as the Mayoral CIL, at the rates set out in the council's charging schedule.

The important nuance for a new home is that CIL is charged on net additional floorspace, and there are reliefs. Where you are replacing an existing building — a replacement dwelling being the obvious case — the floorspace of the demolished building, if it has been in lawful use, can normally be offset against the new floorspace, so you pay CIL only on the increase. There is also a self-build exemption: someone building their own home to live in can, on a properly and promptly made application before commencement, claim exemption from CIL entirely, subject to conditions and a clawback period. These reliefs are valuable but procedural — they have to be claimed correctly and in the right order, before you start work — and missing a step can cost you the relief and leave you with a full CIL bill.

Affordable housing and Section 106 obligations are generally a concern only on larger schemes. A single new home, or a small subdivision, sits below the thresholds at which affordable-housing contributions and most planning obligations bite, so for the typical Ealing new build the levy is CIL rather than affordable housing. On larger developments — multiple homes above the relevant threshold — the London Plan and Local Plan affordable-housing policies and a Section 106 agreement come into play, potentially requiring on-site affordable units or a financial contribution, secured before permission is granted.

We set all of this out at feasibility so there are no surprises: the likely CIL liability (both Mayoral and Ealing borough CIL), the reliefs you may be able to claim and the procedure to claim them, and whether the scheme is large enough to engage affordable housing or Section 106. Because the self-build exemption and the demolition offset have to be handled correctly and before commencement, we make sure the CIL forms are submitted in the right sequence — an administrative detail that quietly saves clients a great deal of money.

A new-build application has to give the council a complete, consistent picture of the plot as it is and the home as it will be, and we prepare the full package to do that. Working through the RIBA plan of work — from feasibility (Stage 0–1), through concept and developed design (Stages 2–3), to technical design and construction information (Stage 4 onward) — means the drawings evolve from testing the principle, to the planning application, to a fully coordinated set the builder works from, each stage building on the last rather than starting again.

The planning drawing package for a new home normally includes: an accurate measured survey of the plot and its context; a site location plan and a detailed site plan showing the existing and proposed layout, the new home in its plot, the retained trees, the access, parking, cycle and bin storage and the gardens; existing site plans and, on a replacement scheme, existing plans, elevations and sections of the building being demolished; and then the proposed drawings — floor plans, elevations and sections of the new home, with levels, materials and boundary treatments shown. Room and dwelling areas are annotated so the council can check them against the space standards, and street-scene or context elevations show the new home alongside its neighbours to demonstrate that it fits the character and grain.

Alongside the drawings we prepare the supporting documents the application needs: a planning statement and, where required, a design and access statement setting out how the scheme meets Ealing's Local Plan, the London Plan and national policy; and the technical assessments the specific site calls for — an arboricultural report and tree survey where trees are affected, a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy where relevant, a daylight and sunlight assessment where amenity impacts need demonstrating, a heritage statement where a conservation area or listed setting is engaged, a transport or access statement for a new or altered access, and ecology, contamination or noise assessments where the site demands them.

Everything is prepared to be internally consistent — the areas on the plans match the schedule and the statements, the drainage strategy matches the site plan, the tree constraints match the layout, the daylight assessment matches the design. A coordinated, self-consistent application is materially more likely to be approved than a set of drawings and reports that contradict each other, and it is far easier for a case officer to recommend. After permission, the same information carries forward into the building-regulations and construction package, so the home you consented is the home that gets built.

The process starts with feasibility, and on a new build this stage carries more weight than on almost any other project. We survey the plot, establish the designations that apply (conservation area, Article 4 direction, TPOs, flood zones, site allocations), check the plot against the character, density and amenity policies, and test what it can realistically support against the space standards. This is where we tell you honestly whether a new dwelling is achievable at all, in what form, and whether the scheme stacks up — before you spend money on a full design and application.

For most new homes the route is then a full planning application, submitted to Ealing Council through the Planning Portal with the drawings and supporting documents, and validated before it is registered. The council's target for deciding a minor application such as a single dwelling is eight weeks (thirteen for a major scheme), though negotiation, consultation responses or an agreed extension of time can lengthen that. Ealing offers a pre-application advice service, which is frequently worthwhile on a new build — particularly on a garden, backland, replacement or heritage-sensitive scheme — because a written steer on the principle and the design before you submit is far cheaper than a refusal, and lets us develop the design in the direction the council will support.

During determination the case officer publicises the application, consults neighbours and statutory consultees, assesses the scheme against the development plan, and either recommends approval (usually with conditions, and on larger schemes a Section 106 agreement) or refusal. Straightforward applications may be decided by officers under delegated powers; more contentious garden, backland or larger schemes can go to the planning committee. We manage the application through that process — responding to the officer, addressing objections, negotiating amendments where that will secure approval, and, if it comes to it, advising on the prospects of an appeal.

Once permission is granted, the project moves into building regulations and construction. We prepare the technical and construction drawings, the structural design, the SAP/energy compliance and the services design, and submit for building regulations approval (through the council's building control or an approved inspector). We discharge any pre-commencement planning conditions — often materials, landscaping, drainage details, tree protection and a construction management plan — before you start on site. Because the same coordinated team that secured the permission also produces the construction information, the transition from consent to build is smooth, and the house that goes up is the house that was consented.

The cost of getting a new home designed and consented in Ealing depends on the plot, the complexity and the constraints — a straightforward infill or replacement on a benign plot is a very different exercise from a contested backland scheme with trees, a basement, a flood constraint and a conservation-area setting. We scope our work to your specific project and give you a clear, fixed fee for our part — architecture, structure and services as a coordinated package — before any drawing work begins, so you know where you stand from the outset. We also give you an honest feasibility view first, so you are not paying for a full design on a plot that cannot take a home.

Separate from our design fee, you should budget for the council's planning application fee (set nationally, and charged per dwelling for a new home), any pre-application advice fee if you use that service, the Building Regulations fees, and the technical assessments the site needs — arboricultural, flood risk and drainage, daylight and sunlight, heritage, highways, ecology, contamination or noise as applicable. On top of the consenting costs come the levies: the Mayoral and Ealing CIL on the net new floorspace (subject to any demolition offset or self-build exemption), and, on larger schemes only, affordable housing and Section 106 costs.

On timescales, feasibility and the design typically run over a few weeks to a couple of months depending on complexity and how quickly decisions are made; a full planning application then runs to the eight-week target for a single home, though garden, backland, heritage or contentious schemes commonly take longer, and an appeal (if needed) adds several months. Building regulations, the discharge of conditions and procurement follow, and then the construction of a whole house — a substantial programme in its own right, usually the best part of a year for a typical detached home, and longer on an awkward or constrained plot. We give you a realistic overall programme for your specific scheme at the outset.

It is worth being clear about where money is really lost on new builds: on plots bought on the assumption that a new home was achievable when a character, garden-land or amenity policy ruled it out; on full designs commissioned before the principle was tested; on schemes pushed to the maximum size that then fail on character, amenity or space standards; and on foundations, drainage, access or party wall issues discovered mid-build because structure and site were not designed alongside the architecture. Getting the principle, the design and the coordination right first time is the most cost-effective way to build a new home in this borough.

Understanding why new-build applications fail in Ealing is the best way to make sure yours does not, and the reasons are remarkably consistent. By far the most common is harm to the character and appearance of the area — a cramped, over-intensive or out-of-place home that erodes the spacious, garden-rich pattern that defines the borough. Backland houses that introduce built form into the green interior of a block, infill or side-garden houses that fill a gap too tightly and break the rhythm of the street, and replacements that are too big or too tall for their context all fail on this ground. In conservation areas and under Article 4 directions the character test is stricter still.

The second great cause of refusal is harm to residential amenity: overlooking and loss of privacy to neighbours, overshadowing and loss of light, and loss of the open outlook that surrounding homes enjoy. A home sited too close to boundaries, with windows that look into neighbours' gardens and rooms, or that casts shadow over adjoining gardens, will be refused — and neighbours, who comment on these applications in numbers, will press exactly these points. Poor amenity for the new home itself — a dark, single-aspect house with a token yard — is refused on the same principle, because the council is looking for genuinely good homes.

Access, parking, trees and drainage account for most of the rest. An awkward, unsafe or unneighbourly access — especially the classic tight backland drive — is a frequent and decisive objection. Inadequate parking, or parking that harms the street or leaves the existing house short after subdivision, is another. The loss of protected or important trees, or a house crammed so close to a tree it cannot survive, will sink a scheme. And a proposal that fails to show how it will manage surface water without increasing flood risk invites refusal on drainage grounds. Missing or inadequate technical information rounds out the list — many of these are avoidable with the right assessment submitted up front.

Our approach is to anticipate every likely reason for refusal and answer it in the application itself: to confirm the principle before anything else, to design to the area's character and the space standards rather than against them, to design out the amenity impacts, and to submit the tree, drainage, flood, heritage and access evidence the scheme needs from the start. We are honest with you at feasibility if a plot is likely to hit an insurmountable problem — a character constraint, a protected tree, an impossible access — because there is no value in a full application designed to fail.

Crown Architecture designs and delivers new homes across Ealing and the surrounding boroughs, and we do it as a single coordinated service: the planning design, the structural design and the building services under one roof. On a new build that integration matters more than on almost any other project, because the architecture, the foundations, the drainage, the energy strategy and the services are completely interdependent — design them separately and they clash on site; design them together and the home you get permission for is genuinely buildable at the cost you were told.

We know the Ealing context specifically: the borough's spacious, garden-rich character and why the council protects it; the garden-grabbing policy that took gardens out of brownfield land; the way replacement, infill and backland schemes are judged on character, amenity, access, trees and drainage; the conservation areas and Article 4 directions that cover so much of residential Ealing, Brentham foremost among them; the emerging Local Plan and the London Plan space, energy and levy standards a new home has to meet; and the London Clay and its trees that shape the structure. We use that knowledge to give you honest feasibility advice — whether a new home is achievable on your plot, in what form, and whether it stacks up — before you commit a penny to a full design.

Just as importantly, we are straightforward to work with. We tell you early and plainly whether a plot will support a new home and by which route, we quote a clear fixed fee, and we prepare a coordinated, self-consistent application that a case officer can approve without having to fill in the gaps — with the character and amenity case made explicitly, the space standards met, the amenity impacts designed out, and the tree, drainage and access evidence in place. Where a scheme is finely balanced, we design and evidence it with an eye to committee and, if necessary, appeal.

We also stay with the project after the drawings are done. We manage the application through Ealing's determination — including pre-application advice and, where a scheme goes to committee, the committee process — respond to the case officer and to neighbours' objections, negotiate where that will secure approval, and once consent is granted carry the scheme through the discharge of conditions and into the building-regulations, structural, services and SAP-compliance information your builder and building control need. The aim is a single, accountable point of contact from the first survey to a finished, consented, buildable home.

If you are asking 'do I need planning permission for a new build in Ealing?', the answer is yes — and the more useful question is whether you can get it on your plot and how. Send us the address and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly whether it is achievable, by which route, and how to get there.