New Build Flats Plans in Newham

A new-build flats scheme means constructing a new building — or replacing an existing one — that contains two or more self-contained flats or apartments. Each flat is its own dwelling, with its own front door, kitchen, bathroom and living space, capable of being occupied, let and sold independently. In planning terms each flat is a home in Use Class C3, the dwellinghouse class, and a block of flats is simply a number of C3 dwellings stacked and arranged within one building. The scheme might be a small two- or three-flat building on an infill plot, a mansion block of a dozen apartments, or a much larger development of many storeys in one of the borough's regeneration areas.

What distinguishes new-build flats from the conversion projects that are common across Newham is that you are creating the building itself, not subdividing an existing house. That changes the nature of the work fundamentally. Instead of working within an existing structure, you are designing foundations, a frame, external walls, a roof, and all the internal separation, services, escape routes and fire compartmentation of a new residential building from first principles — and you are doing it on a plot that has its own ground conditions, boundaries, neighbours, access and drainage. It is a more ambitious project than a conversion, and the planning and technical bar is correspondingly higher.

New-build flats come in many forms in Newham. Some are genuine gap sites — a vacant plot, a former garage court, an end-of-terrace corner or a piece of underused land — where a small building of flats can sit. Some are backland or garden-land plots behind existing frontages. Some are redevelopments, where a tired building (a single house, a former shop, a small commercial unit or a poor-quality earlier building) is demolished and replaced with a purpose-designed block of flats. And some are larger brownfield or regeneration sites in the Arc of Opportunity, where flats are delivered at scale. The policy principles are the same across all of them; the intensity of the tests scales with the size and sensitivity of the site.

Whatever the form, the essential point is that a new-build flats scheme is a whole new dwelling — several of them — built to modern standards. That means it engages the full weight of planning policy on design, density, mix and amenity; the full weight of the Building Regulations on structure, fire, sound, energy and accessibility; and the wider machinery of drainage, flood risk, party wall and the Community Infrastructure Levy. Getting all of those right, and coordinated, from the very first drawing is what this page — and our service — is about.

Yes — always, and it is a full planning application rather than any lighter-touch route. Building new flats creates new dwellings, and the creation of a new dwelling is development that requires planning permission. There is no permitted development right in England that lets you build a new block of flats without applying: permitted development deals with extensions, outbuildings and certain changes to existing buildings, not with the construction of brand-new homes on a plot. So the very first fixed point of any Newham new-build flats project is that a full planning application to the council is unavoidable.

This is different from the permitted-development and prior-approval routes people sometimes hear about. Those routes — for example, the change of use of a shop or office to residential, or upward extensions of certain existing buildings — apply to existing buildings and are tightly defined. They do not create a shortcut for building new flats on a cleared or vacant plot. If your project is genuinely a new building of flats, it is a full application, judged against the whole of the development plan: the Newham Local Plan 2018, the London Plan 2021 and national policy.

There is a related point worth being clear about. If your scheme involves demolishing an existing building first, the demolition itself may need its own consent (prior approval for demolition, and separate controls where the building is listed or in a conservation area), and the replacement flats need full planning permission. If any part of the plot is in the metropolitan Green Belt, on designated open space, or in a Strategic Industrial Location, additional and sometimes prohibitive policy tests apply. We check all of this at the outset, because it determines both whether the project is viable and exactly which applications you need to make.

The safe assumption for any new-build flats project in Newham is that you need full planning permission before you begin, and that you should never start construction — or, in most cases, demolition — first. Building without permission exposes you to enforcement action, makes the flats extremely difficult to sell, mortgage or insure, and can in the worst case require you to undo the work. The correct order is: establish the site's constraints, secure planning permission, complete the building-regulations design, then build and sell or let. Everything on this page is geared to getting that first step right.

The London Borough of Newham lies in the east of the capital, north of the Thames, and was created in 1965 from the former county boroughs of East Ham and West Ham. Its name — a genuinely new name for a new borough — captures its character: this is a place defined by change. For much of its modern history Newham was a place of docks, railways, gasworks and factories: the Royal Docks (the Royal Victoria, Royal Albert and King George V) were once the largest enclosed docks in the world, the Thames Ironworks built ships at Bow Creek, and the Lower Lea Valley was a dense industrial landscape. The closure of the docks and the decline of that industry in the second half of the twentieth century left the borough with vast tracts of brownfield land — and with it, the raw material for one of the largest urban regenerations in Europe.

That regeneration crystallised around the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park at Stratford, the transformed Stratford City and Westfield, the ExCeL exhibition centre and the emerging residential districts of the Royal Docks and Canning Town have reshaped the borough's north and its riverside. The council frames much of this as its Arc of Opportunity, running from Stratford and the Olympic Park down the Lower Lea Valley and east through the Royal Docks to Beckton. Landmarks now range from the ArcelorMittal Orbit and the London Stadium to the Emirates Air Line cable car, the University of East London's dockside campus, and the historic Green Street market and Upton Park — the latter forever associated with West Ham United, whose former Boleyn Ground is itself now a housing development.

Away from the regeneration frontier, Newham is still a borough of ordinary streets and settled communities: the Victorian and Edwardian terraces of Forest Gate, Manor Park, East Ham and Plaistow; the interwar and postwar housing of Beckton and East Ham; and pockets of conservation-area character, including around Manor Park and parts of the older village cores. It is one of the youngest and most diverse boroughs in the country, with acute housing need and among the highest housing-delivery targets in London — which is precisely why new-build flats are such a central part of its future, and why the council both encourages them and holds them to a high standard.

For a new-build flats project, this geography matters enormously. A plot in the Royal Docks or the Lower Lea Valley sits in an opportunity area where higher densities and taller buildings are expected — but where flood risk, from the tidal Thames and the Lea, is a serious constraint. A plot in a settled terraced street in Forest Gate or East Ham sits in a lower-rise context where the design has to respect the prevailing scale and character. And a plot near or within a conservation area brings heritage tests into play. Knowing exactly where your plot sits in Newham's map — its policy area, its flood zone, its context and any designation — is the starting point for a credible application.

The story of new-build flats in Newham is really the story of what replaced its docks and its industry. When the Royal Docks closed in the 1980s and the manufacturing base of the Lower Lea Valley faded, the borough was left with some of the most extensive brownfield land in London — contaminated, cut off by railways and water, but vast and, in a growing city, immensely valuable. The question of the last forty years has been how to turn that land back into a living part of London, and the dominant answer has been high-density residential development, overwhelmingly in the form of flats.

The London Docklands Development Corporation began that process in the 1980s and 1990s, but it was the winning of the 2012 Games and the creation of the Olympic Park that transformed the pace and ambition. Stratford went from a run-down interchange to a major metropolitan centre; Canning Town and the Royal Docks began to fill with apartment buildings; and the borough's planning framework reoriented itself around delivering large numbers of new homes at density, close to transport, on former industrial land. Newham today has one of the highest housing-delivery targets of any London borough, and the great majority of those homes are flats.

That history has two consequences for anyone building flats in the borough today. The first is that Newham is, in principle, strongly pro-development where new homes are concerned — its Local Plan is built around delivering housing growth, and a well-designed flats scheme in the right location is pushing at an open door. The second is that the borough has learned, sometimes the hard way, what poor high-density development does to a place: single-aspect flats, cramped units, weak amenity, monotonous towers and buildings that turned their back on the street. The council's design and quality policies exist precisely to prevent a repeat of that, and they are applied with real seriousness.

The arrival of the Elizabeth line, with stations at Stratford, Maryland, Forest Gate, Manor Park and Custom House, added a further chapter. Fast, frequent connections to central London and beyond have raised the value and the development pressure on plots across the borough — not just in the big regeneration areas but along the whole line — and have strengthened the planning case for car-light, higher-density flats near the stations. For an owner or developer today, understanding this history explains the council's mindset: it wants the homes, it wants them near transport, and it wants them built to a standard that the borough will still be proud of in fifty years.

The most common small new-build flats sites in Newham are infill and redevelopment plots in the established parts of the borough. An end-of-terrace corner plot, a wide gap between buildings, a former garage court, an underused yard, a single bungalow or house on a large plot, or a tired former shop or commercial unit can all support a small building of flats — typically two to eight units over two to four storeys — provided the design respects the scale and character of its surroundings. These are the schemes that make up the bread and butter of new-build flats work across Forest Gate, Plaistow, East Ham, Manor Park and Canning Town.

Backland and garden-land plots are a distinct category and a more difficult one. Land behind existing frontages — the rear parts of long gardens, or landlocked parcels reached by a narrow access — can sometimes take a small building of flats, but these sites raise particular concerns: access and servicing, overlooking and loss of privacy for the surrounding houses, the loss of garden land and greenery, and the risk of a cramped, backland form of development that harms the character of the area. Newham, like most London boroughs, scrutinises backland and garden-land flats carefully, and a scheme has to be designed with real sensitivity to have a chance.

The larger opportunities lie on brownfield and regeneration land, principally in the Arc of Opportunity — the Royal Docks, the Lower Lea Valley, Canning Town and around Stratford — where the Local Plan and the London Plan expect high-density residential development, including tall buildings in appropriate locations. These sites can deliver flats at scale, but they come with the most demanding technical and policy load: flood risk, contamination, drainage, transport, tall-buildings design, affordable-housing requirements, and Greater London Authority involvement on the largest schemes. The reward is density; the price is complexity.

Whatever the plot, the design has to reconcile two things that pull in opposite directions: the owner's wish to build as many good flats as the land will hold, and Newham's insistence on proper flat sizes, dual aspect, mix, amenity, daylight and contextual design. The schemes that gain permission treat the council's standards and the site's real constraints as the design brief rather than as obstacles — and that is precisely how we approach every Newham new-build flats project. We test the plot honestly against the policies and the site conditions first, then design the best compliant scheme the land can genuinely support.

A Newham new-build flats application is judged against the Newham Local Plan 2018 — adopted in December 2018 as a fifteen-year plan looking ahead to 2033 — read together with the London Plan 2021 and national policy. Knowing which policies apply lets us build the application around them rather than hoping to satisfy them by accident. Several strands of the plan routinely come into play on new-build flats schemes, and they interlock.

The starting point is the plan's strong support for housing growth. Newham has among the highest housing targets in London and its Local Plan is structured around delivering new homes, particularly on brownfield land and near transport. A well-designed flats scheme in an appropriate location is therefore working with the grain of the plan rather than against it. The housing policy also addresses the mix and arrangement of housing types, sizes and tenures — the principle of sustainable, mixed and balanced communities — and it expects new development to include an appropriate proportion of family-sized homes rather than only small flats, together with the borough's affordable-housing requirements on qualifying schemes.

The design policies are the other half of the picture. The plan requires all development to achieve a high quality of urban design and to respond positively to local character, and it sets expectations for access, circulation, neighbourliness and the relationship of new buildings to the street. It has a specific approach to tall buildings, steering height to appropriate locations — chiefly the opportunity areas and town centres — and resisting it elsewhere, and it requires taller schemes to be justified on design, townscape and amenity grounds. Alongside these sit the plan's policies on flood risk and drainage, on open space and green infrastructure, on transport and parking, and on protecting employment land — each of which can bear on a flats scheme depending on the site.

Around the borough-specific policies sit the London Plan 2021 policies that apply to every scheme in the capital, most importantly Policy D6 (housing quality and standards) and the design and density policies. Taken together, these documents form the test your application must pass. Because the exact policy numbering and detailed thresholds can change as the plan is reviewed and as the London Plan is updated, we confirm the current applicable policies and requirements for your specific site at the start of every project — and then design the scheme, and write the supporting statements, to demonstrate compliance policy by policy, so the case officer can recommend approval without having to fill gaps themselves.

Every flat you build has to meet minimum internal space standards. In Newham these come from the London Plan 2021 Policy D6, which applies the government's nationally described space standard (NDSS) as the floor. These are not aspirational targets; they are minimums, and a flat that falls below them will normally be refused however clever the layout. On a new-build scheme, where you control the whole building, there is no excuse for undersized flats — so the council expects the standards to be met comfortably.

The headline figures are worth knowing. A one-bedroom, one-person flat (a studio) must be at least 37 square metres where it has a shower room, or 39 square metres with a bathroom. A one-bedroom, two-person flat must be at least 50 square metres. A two-bedroom, three-person flat must be at least 61 square metres, and a two-bedroom, four-person flat at least 70 square metres, with the figures rising further for three-bedroom and larger units — a three-bedroom, five-person flat, for example, is at least 86 square metres over a single storey. There are also minimum bedroom sizes (a single bedroom at least 7.5 square metres, a double at least 11.5 square metres), minimum widths for the main bedroom and living space, and minimum built-in storage.

The London Plan adds requirements on top of the bare NDSS floor areas. Most notably, it expects a floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2.5 metres for at least 75 per cent of the gross internal area of each dwelling — higher than the national minimum — which on a new build is a design decision you make from the outset when you set the floor-to-floor heights. It also sets requirements for private outdoor amenity space, for daylight and sunlight, for accessibility (a proportion of wheelchair-accessible homes to Part M4(3), with the remainder to the accessible-and-adaptable M4(2) standard), and for the layout and circulation of the building as a whole.

Designing to these standards on a new build is where the ambition for the site meets the arithmetic of the rules, and it is unforgiving work. It is easy to sketch an efficient-looking floor plate and then discover that the corner unit is a 34-square-metre studio, or that half the flats are single-aspect, or that the storage and bedroom widths do not comply. We test every proposed flat against the standards from the first layout, so the scheme we submit is one the council can approve on the numbers rather than one it has to reject — and so the building works commercially with a genuinely compliant unit count rather than an optimistic one that collapses under scrutiny.

One of the design tests that most often shapes — and sometimes sinks — a new-build flats scheme in London is dual aspect. A dual-aspect dwelling is one with openable windows on two external walls, whether on opposite sides of the flat or wrapping around a corner. London Plan Policy D6 requires housing development to maximise the provision of dual-aspect dwellings and to normally avoid single-aspect flats, because dual aspect gives better daylight, natural cross-ventilation (which matters for overheating and air quality), and a proper outlook from more than one direction.

The policy is especially firm about the worst single-aspect cases. It expects developments to avoid single-aspect homes that are north-facing, that are exposed to noise, or that have three or more bedrooms. A single-aspect flat can only be justified where it is genuinely a better design solution for the building as a whole and where it can be shown to have adequate passive ventilation, daylight, privacy and protection from overheating. In practice this means a scheme dominated by single-aspect units — a common failing of over-optimistic layouts — will struggle badly in Newham, and a north-facing single-aspect three-bed will almost never be accepted.

This has a direct effect on how a new flats building is arranged. The building form, the position of the cores and corridors, and the depth of the floor plate all determine how many flats can be dual aspect. A double-loaded corridor (flats down both sides of a central corridor) tends to produce single-aspect units; a design with corner flats, shorter corridors, or a form that lets more flats reach two elevations produces better aspect. Getting this right is a fundamental design decision that has to be taken at the very start, because it cannot be retrofitted once the building form is fixed.

Daylight and sunlight are the companion tests, assessed both for the future occupiers of the flats and for the neighbours. Each habitable room should have adequate natural light and a reasonable outlook, and on larger or more sensitive schemes the council will expect a daylight and sunlight assessment (using the recognised BRE methodology) demonstrating that the new flats are well lit and that neighbouring homes and gardens are not unacceptably harmed. We design the building form to maximise dual aspect and good daylight from the outset, and provide the assessments the application needs — so aspect and light are answered as strengths of the scheme rather than raised as objections.

Newham does not just care how big each flat is; it cares about the mix of flats you build. The Local Plan's housing policy reflects the principle of creating sustainable, mixed and balanced communities, and it looks for an appropriate mix of unit sizes and tenures — which, on most schemes, means including a meaningful proportion of family-sized homes (two- and three-bedroom flats and larger) rather than a building composed entirely of studios and one-beds. Family housing is in acute short supply across the borough, and the council resists schemes that add only small units where the site could support family homes.

The right mix for a given scheme depends on the site, its context and its size, and it is guided by the development plan and the London Plan rather than fixed by a single formula. A small infill building might provide a couple of one-beds and a two-bed; a larger block will be expected to include a genuine spread including family-sized flats, often with those larger units placed where they can have direct access to ground-level or good private amenity space. On the largest schemes the mix is negotiated alongside affordable-housing and tenure requirements, and it is scrutinised by the council and, where relevant, the Greater London Authority.

There is a commercial dimension to this as well as a policy one. Family-sized flats are harder to fit to the space and amenity standards, and developers are sometimes tempted to maximise the number of small units. But a mix that ignores the policy invites refusal on principle, and family homes in Newham are in strong demand from both buyers and the borough's own affordable-housing programme. The schemes that succeed treat the mix as a design brief from the start — working out the combination of unit sizes that satisfies the policy, works commercially, and can actually be built to standard on the plot.

We design the mix deliberately, not by accident. At feasibility we establish the mix the site can support to a compliant standard and that satisfies the council's expectations, and we make the case for it in the planning statement — showing that the scheme contributes to the borough's housing supply, including family homes, in a sustainable location. On new-build flats, getting the mix and the density right together is often the single biggest factor in whether a scheme is supported or refused on principle.

Beyond floor area, Newham expects each flat to be a genuinely good place to live, and that means proper outdoor amenity space. The London Plan sets a private outdoor space standard of at least 5 square metres for a one- or two-person dwelling, with an extra square metre for each additional occupant, and a minimum depth and width of 1.5 metres so the space is genuinely usable rather than a token ledge. On a new-build block this is normally provided as private balconies or terraces, with ground-floor and lower flats sometimes given private gardens or patios.

On top of private space, larger schemes are expected to provide good communal amenity space — a shared garden, courtyard, roof terrace or landscaped area — and, where there will be a significant number of child occupants, appropriate children's play space in line with the London Plan's play-space benchmark (broadly ten square metres of play space per child). The quality of this communal and play provision, not just its quantity, matters: the council looks for spaces that are overlooked, safe, sunlit and genuinely usable, and integrated into the design rather than left over.

Amenity space is also assessed in terms of impact on neighbours. New balconies and terraces raise questions of overlooking and loss of privacy for adjoining homes and gardens, particularly on tight urban and backland plots, so their position, orientation and screening have to be designed carefully. A terrace that stares into a neighbour's back bedroom, or a communal roof terrace that overlooks surrounding gardens, will draw objections and can lead to refusal or onerous conditions.

These are the tests that quietly decide the liveability of a scheme, and they are easy to get wrong when the plot is tight and every square metre counts. We design the private and communal amenity provision into the scheme from the start — sizing balconies and terraces to the London Plan standard, providing usable communal space and any required play space, and managing overlooking and privacy — and show it all clearly on the drawings, so the council can see the flats will be genuinely liveable and the neighbours genuinely protected.

A new-build flats scheme is a complete structure designed from the ground up, and the structural design is one of the most consequential parts of the whole project — it shapes the cost, the buildability, the floor-to-floor heights, and even the achievable flat layouts. Crown handles the architecture and the structural engineering together, so the building you draw for planning is one that can actually be engineered and built, rather than a shape that has to be compromised later when the engineer gets involved.

It starts underground. The foundations depend entirely on the ground conditions of the specific plot, and Newham's ground is notably varied and often challenging: much of the borough sits on alluvium and made ground over the river terraces of the Thames and Lea, with a high water table, soft or variable soils, and — on former industrial and dock land — a real likelihood of contamination and buried obstructions. A ground investigation (boreholes and trial pits, with soil and groundwater testing) is normally essential before the foundation design can be settled, and the answer may be traditional strip or trench foundations, a reinforced-concrete raft, or piled foundations, depending on what the ground reveals. Getting this right early is critical, because foundations are one of the largest and least reversible costs of a new building.

Above ground, the superstructure — the frame that carries the building — is chosen to suit the height, the layout and the budget: load-bearing masonry for a modest low-rise block, a timber or light-gauge steel frame for some schemes, or reinforced concrete or a structural steel frame for taller and larger buildings. The structural grid has to be coordinated with the flat layouts so that walls, columns and beams land in sensible places, floors span economically, and the fire-compartment and sound-separation requirements between flats are achievable. On flats, the floors between dwellings do a great deal of work at once — carrying loads, providing fire compartmentation and delivering the sound insulation the regulations demand — so their design is a genuinely multidisciplinary problem.

Then there is the relationship with the plot and its neighbours. New foundations and structure close to a boundary almost always trigger the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, requiring the correct notices and often a party wall award with the adjoining owners, and excavation near neighbouring buildings has to be designed so as not to undermine them. Retaining structures, basements (where proposed), and the sequencing of demolition and construction all have to be engineered. We design the structure alongside the architecture and the fire strategy so that the planning scheme is genuinely buildable, the ground risk is understood early, and the construction information is coordinated and complete.

A new block of flats is full of building services — the mechanical, electrical and public-health (MEP) systems that make the flats work — and on a new build these have to be designed as an integrated whole rather than added piecemeal. Each flat needs its own heating and hot water, ventilation, electrical supply and metering, water supply, drainage and, increasingly, provision for electric-vehicle charging and for digital connectivity. The building as a whole needs its incoming utilities, its risers and distribution, its communal lighting and power, its lifts (where the building's height requires them), and its life-safety systems.

Heating and hot water are the biggest single decision, and they are being transformed by the Future Homes Standard (covered in the next section). New flats are moving decisively away from individual gas boilers towards low-carbon systems — most commonly air-source heat pumps, either serving each flat individually or as part of a communal system, and in some regeneration areas connection to a district or communal heat network. The choice affects the plant space, the risers, the roof (for external heat-pump units or plant), the acoustic design, and the flat layouts, so it has to be settled early and coordinated with the architecture.

Ventilation is the other system that new flats depend on. Modern, well-insulated, airtight flats need proper mechanical ventilation to keep the air healthy and to control moisture, and the Building Regulations (Part F) set the requirements; on many new flats this means continuous mechanical extract or mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), with the ductwork and units designed into the ceilings and risers from the start. Overheating is a specific and growing concern in new flats — the Building Regulations (Part O) now require overheating to be assessed and mitigated — and it is closely linked to aspect, glazing, shading and ventilation, which is another reason dual aspect and good design matter.

Drainage, water and the rest of the public-health systems complete the picture: foul drainage connecting to the sewer, surface-water drainage managed sustainably (see the drainage section below), cold and hot water services, and the associated tanks, pumps and risers. On a new build, all of this has to be routed and coordinated so it fits within the structure and the ceilings without clashing, and so it can be maintained. Because Crown designs the architecture, structure and services together, the risers, plant and routes are planned into the building from the first design rather than squeezed in afterwards — which is the difference between a building that works and one that is a maintenance headache from day one.

Every new dwelling in England has to demonstrate that it meets the energy-efficiency and carbon requirements of the Building Regulations (Part L), and the way that is proven for new homes is through SAP — the Standard Assessment Procedure — which models the fabric, the heating and hot-water system, the ventilation and any renewables to calculate the dwelling's energy and carbon performance and its Energy Performance Certificate rating. For new flats, a SAP assessment is required for each dwelling type, at design stage (to demonstrate compliance) and as-built (to confirm it).

The bar is rising sharply. The Future Homes Standard is the government's uplift to the energy standards for new homes, and it is designed to make new dwellings produce in the order of 75 to 80 per cent less carbon than homes built to the 2013 standards — a step change that in practice cannot be met with fossil-fuel heating. The Approved Documents giving effect to the standard were published on 24 March 2026, and the standard comes into force on 24 March 2027, with a twelve-month transitional period. New flats designed and built from that point will need to meet it, and it is already shaping how sensible schemes are designed now, so that they do not become obsolete between permission and construction.

In practical terms the Future Homes Standard means new flats will be heated without gas or other fossil fuels — overwhelmingly by heat pumps or by connection to a low-carbon heat network — and will need a high standard of fabric (insulation and airtightness), efficient ventilation with heat recovery where appropriate, and often solar photovoltaic panels to help meet the carbon target. These are not bolt-on extras; they are fundamental design decisions that affect the roof, the plant space, the risers, the elevations and the flat layouts, which is exactly why the energy strategy has to be developed alongside the architecture and services from the outset.

On top of the Building Regulations, larger schemes in London face the London Plan's own energy policy, which follows a 'be lean, be clean, be green, be seen' hierarchy, requires major development to be net-zero-carbon (with a cash-in-lieu offset payment to the borough for any shortfall), and requires whole-life-carbon and, in some cases, circular-economy assessments. Newham, as a borough with high delivery and strong climate ambitions, expects new flats to perform. We design the energy strategy — fabric, low-carbon heating, ventilation and renewables — into the scheme from the start, prepare the SAP and any energy statement the application needs, and make sure the building that gets permission is one that can be built to pass Part L and the Future Homes Standard as they apply to it.

Fire safety is one of the defining requirements of a new block of flats, and it has become far more prominent — and more tightly regulated — since the Grenfell Tower fire and the Building Safety Act 2022. A new flats building has to be designed to the fire-safety requirements of the Building Regulations (Part B), which means each flat is a fire-resisting compartment, the escape routes and common parts are protected, there is appropriate fire detection and alarm, the external walls and any cladding meet the required standards, and fire-service access and firefighting facilities are provided. On a new build, the fire strategy is not a document you produce at the end; it shapes the plan — where the cores, stairs, corridors, lobbies and compartment walls go — from the very first sketch.

The single biggest recent change for taller residential buildings is the second-staircase requirement. Following amendments to the statutory guidance (Approved Document B), new residential buildings with a top storey at or above 18 metres in height must be provided with more than one common staircase. This requirement comes into force on 30 September 2026, with transitional arrangements for schemes already sufficiently progressed (broadly, work started and sufficiently advanced by that date or within eighteen months of it, up to 30 March 2028). For any new flats building in Newham that reaches 18 metres or more — which is entirely possible on opportunity-area and tall-building sites — a second staircase must now be designed in, and because a stair core is one of the largest and least flexible elements of a building's plan, this has a major effect on the layout, the efficiency and the viability of taller schemes.

Even below 18 metres, the fire strategy governs the plan. The Building Regulations set limits on travel distances to a stair, requirements for protected lobbies between flats and the common stair in many cases, standards for fire doors and compartmentation, and provisions for smoke control and for the fire and rescue service. Buildings that fall within the 'higher-risk' definition (broadly, those at least 18 metres or seven storeys, containing at least two residential units) are also subject to the Building Safety Regulator's more rigorous gateway regime under the Building Safety Act, which adds a formal, staged approval process on top of ordinary building control.

Because the fire strategy dictates where walls, stairs, lobbies and cores can go, it has to be designed alongside the planning layout — not discovered afterwards, when it may force a wholesale redesign. We develop the fire strategy with the architecture and structure from the outset, bring in a fire engineer where the building's height or complexity requires one, and make sure the scheme that goes for planning is one that can actually be signed off under the current fire regime. On taller and higher-risk buildings this coordination is not optional; it is the difference between a scheme that can be built and one that cannot.

A new flats building has to satisfy the whole of the Building Regulations, not just the headline parts, and two more deserve particular mention because they shape the design. The first is sound insulation. Because separate households will live above, below and beside one another, the Building Regulations (Part E) require a high standard of sound separation between flats — both airborne and impact sound — through the separating floors and walls. On new-build flats the required performance can be shown either by testing a sample of completed separating elements or by using government-approved 'Robust Details', and either way the sound build-ups take real thickness and have to be designed into the structure and the floor-to-floor heights from the start.

The second is accessibility. The Building Regulations (Part M) set standards for access to and within dwellings, and the London Plan requires that a proportion of new homes — normally ten per cent — are built to the wheelchair-user standard (M4(3)), with the remainder to the accessible-and-adaptable standard (M4(2)). For a block of flats this means step-free access from the street to every flat, lifts where the building's height requires them, and internal layouts, door widths and bathrooms designed to the relevant standard. Accessibility, like fire and sound, is far easier to design in from the start than to retrofit into a fixed plan.

Beyond these, the regulations cover structure (Part A), fire (Part B), site preparation and contamination and moisture (Part C — important on Newham's brownfield land), drainage (Part H), electrical safety (Part P), ventilation (Part F), overheating (Part O), conservation of fuel and power (Part L), security (Part Q) and more. A new dwelling has to satisfy all of the applicable parts, and they interact: the energy standard affects the ventilation and overheating design; the fire strategy affects the structure and the layout; the sound insulation affects the floor build-ups and heights. This is precisely why a coordinated, multidisciplinary design is so valuable on a new build.

We design to the Building Regulations throughout, not as an afterthought, so that the scheme that wins planning permission is one that can be delivered and signed off without a painful redesign. On a new-build flats project the planning drawing and the buildable, regulations-compliant design have to be developed together — because a beautiful planning scheme that cannot meet Part B, Part E, Part L or Part M is worth nothing on site.

Drainage and flood risk are unusually important in Newham, and on many sites they are among the first things that have to be resolved. Much of the borough is low-lying land close to the tidal Thames and the River Lea, and significant areas — particularly in the Royal Docks, the Lower Lea Valley and along the riverside — fall within the Environment Agency's higher flood-risk zones (Flood Zones 2 and 3). Development in those zones has to pass the national planning 'sequential' and, where necessary, 'exception' tests, and must be supported by a site-specific Flood Risk Assessment showing that the flats will be safe for their lifetime, that finished floor levels are set appropriately, that there is safe access and escape, and that the development does not increase flood risk elsewhere.

Even away from the tidal and river flood zones, surface-water (pluvial) flooding and drainage capacity are live issues across the borough, and Newham — as the Lead Local Flood Authority — takes them seriously. New development is expected to manage surface water sustainably through a drainage strategy using Sustainable Drainage Systems (SuDS): attenuating and slowing runoff, and where possible mimicking natural drainage, through measures such as green and blue roofs, permeable paving, rainwater harvesting, attenuation tanks and controlled discharge. The London Plan sets a drainage hierarchy and a strong expectation of greenfield or near-greenfield runoff rates, and the council will look for a genuine SuDS-led approach rather than a pipe straight to the sewer.

For a new-build flats scheme this means the drainage and flood strategy has to be designed alongside the architecture and the landscaping, not tacked on. Where and how surface water is stored and released, where the attenuation sits (under the podium, in tanks, in green roofs), how the foul drainage connects, and how the finished floor levels respond to flood risk all affect the building and the site design. On sites in the flood zones, the flood strategy can be the factor that determines whether — and in what form — the scheme is possible at all.

We assess drainage and flood risk for your specific plot at the very start, commission the Flood Risk Assessment and drainage strategy where they are needed, and design the SuDS and the levels into the scheme so that water is answered as an integral part of the design. Getting this right avoids one of the most common — and most fundamental — reasons a Newham flats scheme runs into trouble, and it is far cheaper to design in than to discover late.

Many new-build flats schemes in Newham begin with demolishing something — a single house, a former shop or commercial unit, or a poor-quality earlier building — and demolition has its own controls. The demolition of most buildings requires a prior-approval application to the council covering the method of demolition and the restoration of the site, and where the building is listed, in a conservation area, or subject to other designations, additional and more stringent consents apply. Demolition also has to be carried out safely and lawfully, with the right notices, and its sequencing with the new construction has to be planned.

Wherever a new building is put up close to a boundary — which is almost always the case on Newham's tight urban and infill plots — the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is engaged. Excavating for foundations within three metres of a neighbouring building (and to a greater depth than its foundations), or within six metres in certain cases, and building on or up to the line of junction with a neighbour, all require formal notices to the adjoining owners and usually a party wall award prepared by surveyors. This is a legal process separate from planning and building control, and it has to be started in good time because it can take weeks or months to resolve and can affect how and when you can build.

The relationship with neighbouring buildings goes beyond the party wall itself. Excavation and construction next to existing homes have to be designed and sequenced so as not to undermine or damage them, temporary works and support may be needed, and construction management — noise, dust, hours, deliveries and site safety in a dense residential area — is something the council will control by condition and something responsible neighbours will expect to be handled well. On backland and infill sites, access for construction is itself sometimes a genuine constraint that has to be solved at design stage.

We identify the demolition, party wall and neighbouring-building issues at the outset, so they are planned for rather than sprung on you mid-project. Handling them properly — the right demolition consents, the party wall notices served in good time, a buildable construction sequence and a sensible construction-management approach — keeps the project lawful, keeps the neighbours onside, and avoids the delays and disputes that catch out schemes where these matters were left until it was too late.

New-build flats create net new floorspace, and net new floorspace attracts the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) — a charge, calculated per square metre of new development, that funds the infrastructure needed to support growth. In Newham two CIL charges apply: the borough's own Newham CIL and the Mayor of London's Mayoral CIL (currently Mayoral CIL 2, which principally funds Crossrail / the Elizabeth line). Both are charged on the net additional internal floorspace of the development, both are index-linked so the rates rise over time, and both are calculated and demanded by the council when planning permission is granted.

The Newham borough CIL was adopted with a residential charge (of the order of sixty pounds per square metre at its 2014 base rate) that is indexed annually, so the figure actually charged on your scheme depends on the year the permission is granted and the current indexation — which is why we always work from the council's latest annual CIL rate summary rather than a remembered figure. The Mayoral CIL is charged in addition and varies by charging band (Newham sits in a defined band). Where an existing building is being demolished and has been in lawful use, its floorspace can, in defined circumstances, be offset against the new floorspace, which can substantially reduce the CIL — one of several reasons the existing use and its lawfulness matter.

Separate from CIL are planning obligations under Section 106 agreements. These are negotiated, site-specific obligations — most importantly affordable housing on qualifying schemes, but also contributions towards infrastructure, transport, open space or other matters that a specific development makes necessary and that CIL does not cover. On larger flats schemes the affordable-housing requirement, and the viability discussion that sometimes accompanies it, can be one of the most significant elements of the whole application, and it interacts with the London Plan's threshold approach to affordable housing.

Getting the CIL and obligations picture right early matters because it feeds directly into the viability of the scheme. We help you understand the likely CIL liability (borough and Mayoral) and any Section 106 obligations at feasibility, identify any floorspace offset from an existing building, and make sure the required CIL forms are submitted correctly so you keep any reliefs and instalment options you are entitled to. A scheme that is designed and appraised with these costs understood from the start is far less likely to run into a nasty surprise after permission.

A Newham new-build flats application has to tell the council a complete and convincing story: what the site is now, what will be built, how it works, and how it meets every relevant policy and standard. We prepare the full set of drawings and supporting documents — organised around the RIBA Plan of Work stages — so the application is complete, consistent and easy to assess, and so the case officer can check every standard without having to guess.

The work starts with feasibility and concept design (RIBA Stages 0–2): a measured topographical and site survey, a review of the planning history and constraints, an appraisal of the site's capacity against the space, aspect, amenity, daylight and density policies, and one or more concept options showing what the plot can realistically deliver. This is where we give you an honest view of how many flats, of what mix, at what height and standard, and at what likely cost, before you commit to a full application. It is also where the big cross-disciplinary decisions — structure, cores and stairs, fire strategy, energy strategy, drainage and flood response — are first set.

The planning application package (developed through RIBA Stage 3) then includes an accurate existing site plan and survey, the proposed site plan, and the proposed floor plans, elevations and sections of the building — with each flat's layout, its internal floor area annotated against the space standards, its bedroom sizes, its private amenity space, and the building's cores, stairs, lift and refuse and cycle stores clearly shown. Alongside the drawings we prepare the supporting documents the scheme needs: a planning statement setting out how the proposal meets the Newham Local Plan and London Plan policies, a design and access statement, and — depending on the site — a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy, an energy statement, a daylight and sunlight assessment, a transport statement, a contamination report, an arboricultural report, a heritage statement, and an affordable-housing and viability position on qualifying schemes.

After permission, the design develops into the technical and construction information (RIBA Stages 4 onward): the detailed architectural, structural, services and fire information the building-control body, the contractor and the specialist trades need to build the flats and get them signed off — including, for higher-risk buildings, the information required for the Building Safety Regulator's gateway process. Everything is prepared to be internally consistent, so the flat areas on the plans match the planning statement, the fire strategy matches the layout, the structure suits the architecture, and the whole package moves smoothly from a permission into a buildable, sign-off-ready scheme.

The process starts with feasibility. We survey the site, confirm its planning history and constraints, check its policy area, flood zone, designation and access, assess its ground and drainage conditions, and work out the best compliant scheme it can support. This is where we give you an honest view of whether the project stacks up, how many flats and of what mix, at what height and standard, before you spend money on a full application — because on a new build the feasibility stage is where the money is either well spent or wasted.

Newham offers pre-application advice, and on a new-build flats scheme it is very often worth using — particularly where the site is in a sensitive location, involves a tall building, sits in a flood zone, or raises a finely balanced density, mix or heritage question. A written steer from the council on your proposal reduces the risk of a refusal, flags concerns early while there is still time to adjust the scheme, and signals to the eventual case officer that the proposal has been developed thoughtfully. On the largest schemes there may also be engagement with the Greater London Authority and design-review input. We prepare and manage the pre-application process where it adds value.

We then prepare the full drawing package and supporting documents, submit the application to Newham through the Planning Portal, and manage it through validation and determination — responding to the case officer's queries, providing additional information and technical reports, and negotiating amendments where that will secure approval. Minor applications (broadly, schemes of fewer than ten dwellings) run against an eight-week statutory target from validation; major applications (ten or more dwellings) run against a thirteen-week target, and larger or more complex schemes commonly take longer and are decided by the planning committee rather than by officers.

Once permission is granted, we can carry the scheme forward into the building-regulations and construction design, so the same coordinated team that won the permission also delivers the information your builder needs on site — the structural, fire, sound, energy, services and accessibility detail a new flats building depends on. For higher-risk buildings we manage the Building Safety Regulator's gateway process. And because we design with the Building Regulations in mind throughout, the finished flats are set up to pass building control, including the sound testing, air-tightness testing and as-built SAP that new dwellings require.

The cost of a Newham new-build flats scheme depends on the size and complexity of the site and the building, and how much of the full package you need — from a straightforward small infill block of a few flats, through to a larger scheme with significant groundworks, a tall-building fire strategy, a heat-network connection and an affordable-housing and viability negotiation. We scope the work to your specific project and give you a clear fee proposal for our part, staged across the RIBA work stages, before any drawing work begins, so you can budget with confidence.

Separate from our fee, you should budget for the council's planning application fee, which is set nationally and rises with the number of new dwellings created (a per-dwelling charge for residential development, so a flats scheme's fee scales with unit count), and for any pre-application advice fee if you use that service. On top of these come the Community Infrastructure Levy (borough and Mayoral) on the net new floorspace, any Section 106 obligations including affordable housing, building-control charges, structural and services engineering, the specialist reports the site requires (flood, drainage, contamination, transport, daylight, energy, arboriculture, heritage), party wall surveyors' fees, and of course the construction cost of the building itself. We set the whole picture out at the start so there are no surprises.

On timescales, feasibility and concept design typically take a few weeks once we can survey the site; developing the full planning package takes several weeks more; pre-application advice, where used, adds a few weeks; and the application itself runs against the eight- or thirteen-week target from validation, often longer for major, sensitive or committee-decided schemes. The building-regulations design and the construction phase then follow, with the construction period depending entirely on the size and form of the building. We give you a realistic programme for your specific scheme at the outset.

It is worth remembering that on a new build, money is rarely lost on good design and thorough preparation — it is lost on refusals, redesigns, ground surprises, enforcement and buildings that cannot be signed off or sold. Getting a Newham flats scheme right first time, to a standard that satisfies both planning and building control and that is genuinely buildable on its specific plot, is by far the most cost-effective way to turn land into flats that let, sell and hold their value.

Understanding why applications fail is the best way to make sure yours does not. The most common reason for refusal of new-build flats in London is overdevelopment: a scheme that tries to cram too many units onto the plot, resulting in undersized flats, too many single-aspect units, poor daylight, inadequate amenity space, or a building that is simply too big and bulky for its context. Newham's design and space-standard policies exist precisely to catch this, and an over-optimistic scheme runs straight into them.

The second big theme is poor relationship to context and neighbours. A building that is out of scale with its surroundings, that harms the character of a street or a conservation area, that overlooks and dominates neighbouring homes and gardens, or that proposes a tall building in an inappropriate location, will be refused on design and amenity grounds. Backland and garden-land schemes are especially vulnerable here, because they so often raise access, privacy, overlooking and cramped-form concerns all at once.

The remaining refusal reasons are the technical and policy ones: an unacceptable position on flood risk or drainage; loss of protected employment land or open space; inadequate affordable housing or housing mix; failure to demonstrate the energy or sustainability requirements; harm to trees or ecology; unacceptable transport or parking impacts; and — increasingly — a fire strategy or building form that cannot meet the current fire and building-safety rules. Each of these has sunk applications that failed to address it, and each can be designed out.

Our approach is to anticipate every one of these reasons and answer it in the application itself. We are honest with you at feasibility about the density the site can genuinely support, whether a tall building is realistic, and whether flood, employment-land or heritage constraints make the scheme difficult, because there is no value in submitting an application designed to be refused — better to know early and, where possible, adjust the scheme or the ambition to something the council can support.

To make the process concrete, consider a common Newham scenario: an owner has a plot in Forest Gate — say a tired end-of-terrace corner site or a large plot with a single run-down building — within walking distance of the Elizabeth line, and wants to build a small block of flats. It is exactly the kind of site the borough's housing strategy encourages: brownfield, near excellent transport, in a settled residential context — and exactly the kind of new-build that needs full planning permission and careful design.

At feasibility, we survey the plot, check its planning history, flood zone and any conservation-area context, and test its capacity against Newham's policies and the London Plan standards. The context — a street of two- and three-storey terraces — points to a building of three or four storeys rather than a tower, and the arithmetic of the space and dual-aspect standards points to around six flats: a mix that includes family-sized two-beds as well as one-beds, each checked against the NDSS floor areas, each with a private balcony or terrace to the London Plan amenity standard, and the building arranged so that as many flats as possible are dual aspect. We set the cores, the single stair (the building being below 18 metres), the refuse and cycle stores, and the ground and drainage strategy at this stage.

The technical design follows from that layout. A ground investigation informs the foundation design for Newham's variable, high-water-table ground; the superstructure and the separating floors are engineered to carry the loads and to deliver the Part E sound insulation and Part B fire compartmentation; the energy strategy is built around a low-carbon, heat-pump-based heating system with good fabric and, where needed, solar panels, to meet Part L on the way to the Future Homes Standard; the ventilation, overheating, drainage and services are designed in; and a SuDS-based surface-water strategy manages runoff on the tight plot. All of this is coordinated as one package so the planning scheme is genuinely buildable.

On the planning side, we prepare the existing and proposed drawings with every flat area annotated, a planning statement that meets Newham's Local Plan and the London Plan policies head-on — space standards, dual aspect, mix and family homes, amenity and daylight, design and context, flood and drainage, energy, refuse and cycle, and an honest transport case for a car-light scheme by the Elizabeth line — plus a design and access statement and any site-specific reports (flood, contamination, daylight, arboriculture) the plot calls for. Submitted through the Planning Portal as a minor application and managed through Newham's validation and determination against the eight-week target, a scheme like this goes in as a proposal the case officer can recommend for approval. Once permission and its conditions are dealt with, the same coordinated drawings carry the project into construction and set it up to pass building control, the sound and air-tightness testing, and the as-built SAP.

It helps to understand who lives in Newham's new flats, because the demand is part of the housing story the council recognises. Newham is one of the youngest and most diverse boroughs in the country, with acute and growing housing need, excellent and improving transport (the Elizabeth line, the Jubilee line, the DLR, the Overground and national rail), and a location that has gone from the edge of London's consciousness to one of its most dynamic growth areas in a generation. Well-designed new flats — for young professionals, couples, sharers and families, and for the borough's own affordable-housing programme — are in strong and durable demand from both owner-occupiers and renters.

That demand is structural, not a fad. London's population continues to grow, Newham has among the highest housing-delivery targets of any borough, and the combination of transport, regeneration and relative value has made the borough a focus for both institutional and small-scale residential development for years. For an owner or developer, a compliant, well-designed new-build flats scheme is a way of turning underused land into homes that meet a genuine and pressing need — which is exactly the need the council's own policies are trying to satisfy.

For your application, the point is that a good new-build flats scheme delivers what the council wants: more homes, of a proper standard, including family homes, in a sustainable and well-connected location, on brownfield or infill land. A scheme that delivers that at genuine quality is contributing to the borough's housing supply — and framing the proposal in those terms, honestly and with evidence, is part of building a persuasive planning case rather than presenting it as simply more density on a tight plot.

The flip side is that a poorly conceived scheme — overdevelopment, undersized single-aspect flats, no family homes, weak amenity, a form that harms its neighbours or ignores flood risk — meets that need badly and hands the council every reason to refuse. The market rewards quality too: well-designed Newham flats let and sell faster and hold their value better than cramped, poorly built ones. Quality is not a cost centre here; it is what makes both the planning case and the investment work.

A grant of planning permission for new-build flats rarely comes without conditions, and on a new building there are usually a good many. It is worth knowing what to expect so they can be discharged smoothly rather than becoming a stumbling block. Conditions are requirements attached to the permission that must be met — before work starts, before the flats are occupied, or on an ongoing basis — and failing to comply with them can put the lawful implementation of the permission at risk.

On Newham new-build flats permissions, common conditions include the approval of external materials and detailed design; a construction management (or construction logistics) plan controlling hours, deliveries, noise and dust; the approval and implementation of the drainage and SuDS strategy; contamination investigation and remediation on brownfield sites; the energy and sustainability measures; landscaping and boundary treatments; the provision and retention of the refuse, recycling and cycle storage; the amenity and play space; details of any biodiversity or green-roof measures; and, on qualifying schemes, the affordable-housing and other Section 106 obligations. Fire and building-safety matters are dealt with through building control and (for higher-risk buildings) the Building Safety Regulator, but the planning conditions frequently reference the approved plans.

Many of these are 'pre-commencement' conditions that must be discharged before any work — often including demolition and groundworks — can lawfully begin, so it is important to allow time for them in the programme. Each is discharged by a further application to the council providing the required information. We flag the onerous conditions when the decision arrives, sequence their discharge so the programme is not held up, and prepare the discharge submissions so the build can proceed on time.

The practical message is that the permission is the beginning of a compliant scheme, not the whole of it: the conditions, the Section 106 obligations, the CIL payments, the building-regulations sign-off and (for taller buildings) the gateway process all have to line up before the flats can be lawfully built, occupied and sold. Because we design the scheme with all of these in mind, the conditions Newham attaches are generally ones the scheme already meets — which makes discharging them a manageable process rather than a late scramble.

Not every application is approved first time, and a refusal is not necessarily the end of the road. When Newham refuses a new-build flats scheme, it must give its reasons, and those reasons are the roadmap for what happens next. Sometimes the sensible response is to revise the scheme to overcome the objections and resubmit; sometimes, where the refusal turns on a point of planning judgement we consider wrong, the right route is an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate.

A revised application is often the faster and cheaper route where the reasons for refusal are about design and quantum — too many units, undersized or single-aspect flats, insufficient amenity, an over-large form, or a detailed design or amenity concern — because those can be addressed by reducing or reshaping the scheme. Many authorities, Newham included, allow a 'free go' resubmission of a similar application within a set period after a refusal, which we can use to submit an improved scheme without a further application fee.

An appeal is the route where the refusal turns on a matter of principle — for example, a disputed conclusion on density, on the acceptability of a tall building, on flood risk, on the loss of employment land, or on heritage harm — that a revised scheme cannot resolve. Appeals take longer and require a properly argued case, drawing on national policy, the development plan, the London Plan and appeal precedent, but a well-founded appeal against an unreasonable refusal can and does succeed, and appeal decisions on new-build cases also help clarify how the policies are applied in practice.

The best defence against a refusal is, of course, an application designed not to be refused — which is why we invest so heavily in feasibility and in answering the council's tests up front. But if a refusal does come, we will give you a straight assessment of whether to revise and resubmit or to appeal, and prepare whichever route gives the scheme its best prospects.

Crown Architecture prepares new-build flats schemes across Newham and the surrounding east London boroughs, and we do it as a single coordinated service: the planning design, the structural engineering, the building services and the fire strategy under one roof. That matters on new-build flats more than almost any other project type, because the architecture, the structure, the fire and escape strategy, the sound and energy design and the drainage are completely interdependent — design them separately and they clash, at great cost and delay.

We know the Newham regime: that new dwellings always need full planning permission; the Local Plan 2018 policies and the London Plan 2021 standards your application will be judged against; the space, dual-aspect, mix, amenity and daylight tests; the borough's serious flood-risk and drainage constraints; the tall-building and second-staircase rules; the energy trajectory to the Future Homes Standard; and the CIL and affordable-housing obligations. We use that knowledge to give you honest advice at feasibility and to build applications designed to pass.

Just as importantly, we are straightforward to work with. We tell you early what your plot can realistically deliver — how many flats, of what mix, at what height and standard — and where the constraints lie; we quote a clear staged fee; and we prepare a coordinated, self-consistent application that a case officer can approve without having to fill gaps. Then, once permission is granted, we can carry the scheme through to the building-regulations and construction information your builder needs, including the structural, fire, sound, energy and services detail a new flats building depends on, and manage the Building Safety Regulator's gateway process on higher-risk buildings.

We also stay with the project after the drawings are done. We manage the application through Newham's validation and determination, respond to the case officer, negotiate amendments where that will secure approval, help discharge the conditions and Section 106 obligations, and prepare the construction information. The aim is a single, accountable point of contact from the first survey to a buildable, sign-off-ready block of flats, rather than a set of drawings handed over and a client left to navigate the council and the builder alone.

If you are considering building flats in Newham — whether it is a single infill block or a larger scheme — send us the site details and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly what is achievable and how to get there.