New Build Planning Permission in Bromley

A new-build dwelling is a home that did not exist before: a house built on a vacant plot, a house squeezed into a garden or a piece of backland, a home created where a garage, outbuilding or non-residential building once stood, or a replacement house built after the original is demolished. In every one of those cases you are creating a new planning unit — a new dwellinghouse in Use Class C3 — and that is fundamentally different, in planning law, from extending or altering a building that already exists. It is the creation of the dwelling itself that the planning system controls most tightly.

This page is for anyone contemplating building a home from scratch in Bromley: a homeowner with a large garden or a spare corner of a plot, an investor who has bought a site with development potential, someone who wants to knock down a modest bungalow and build a proper family house in its place, or a self-builder with a genuine plot and a vision. It is equally for people who have been told a site 'has potential' and want an honest answer about whether that is true before they commit. In this borough, more than most, that honest answer very often turns on the green belt and on the borough's fierce protection of suburban character.

The single most important thing to understand at the outset is that there is no permitted development right that creates a new dwelling out of thin air. Permitted development lets you extend a house, convert a loft, put up an outbuilding, or — under separate rights — change certain existing buildings from one use to another. It does not let you build a new, separate home on an empty plot or in a garden. That always needs full planning permission, applied for and granted before you start, and judged on its planning merits against the whole development plan. Everything else on this page flows from that.

The first thing we establish on any Bromley new-build instruction, therefore, is whether the principle of a new dwelling is acceptable on your specific plot at all — before a single line of the house is drawn. That means checking the site against the green belt boundary, against the borough's backland and garden-land policy, against local character and density, and against the constraints on the site itself: trees, flood risk, access, neighbours' amenity. Only once the principle is settled is it worth designing the home. 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.

In planning terms, building a new dwelling is 'development' in the most complete sense — it is both operational development (the physical building work) and, usually, a change in the use of the land to residential. The General Permitted Development Order, which grants automatic rights for many minor works, deliberately does not extend to the creation of a new separate dwelling. There is no 'Class' you can rely on to build a house on a plot; the rights that exist (extensions, outbuildings, loft conversions, and the change-of-use rights that convert existing buildings) all assume a building or a dwelling is already there. A genuinely new home falls outside all of them.

That means the route for a new-build in Bromley is a full planning application, determined by Bromley Council against the whole of the development plan — the Bromley Local Plan (2019), the London Plan (2021), and national policy in the National Planning Policy Framework. Unlike the lighter-touch 'prior approval' regimes that apply to some conversions, a full application puts everything in play: the principle of development, the impact on the green belt where relevant, design and character, density, residential amenity for occupiers and neighbours, trees and landscaping, highways and parking, drainage, sustainability and, on larger schemes, affordable housing and planning obligations.

There are two common routes to that permission. The first is a full planning application, where you submit detailed drawings of the actual house you intend to build and the council decides the whole thing in one go. 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 a single home most owners go straight to a full application once feasibility is positive.

A related point that catches people out is the boundary between a large extension 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 — the council will treat it as a new dwelling requiring full permission, not as permitted-development extension work. We advise on exactly where that line falls, because getting it wrong (building 'an annexe' that is really a house, for instance) can lead to enforcement action and a demand to undo the work.

Bromley is an old Kentish place that became a London borough only in 1965, and its long history as market town and countryside still shapes the place today. The bishops of Rochester were lords of the manor from Norman times until 1845, and Bromley Palace — begun in the late twelfth century and rebuilt over the centuries — was their residence for some seven hundred years; the surviving palace building now sits within the Civic Centre. The town received its market charter in 1158, and for centuries Bromley was a country market town on the road from London into Kent, only becoming a major residential suburb after the railways arrived from the 1860s onwards.

That railway-era growth is why so much of the borough's housing stock is late-Victorian, Edwardian and interwar, laid out as spacious garden suburbs on generous plots — precisely the grain the Local Plan now works so hard to protect. Bromley College, founded in 1666 as almshouses for clergy widows, survives as a listed cloistered redbrick building in the town centre, a reminder of the older settlement beneath the suburb. The town centre itself, focused on the High Street and the Glades, is the borough's Metropolitan Centre and the main focus for higher-density housing growth.

Bromley's landmarks tell the story of a borough poised between London and the Kent countryside. Down House at Downe, on the borough's rural southern edge, is where Charles Darwin lived from 1842 until his death and where he wrote On the Origin of Species; it is now a museum in a landscape that is quintessential Bromley green belt. Crystal Palace, re-erected on Sydenham Hill in 1854 and destroyed by fire in 1936, gives its name to the park on the borough's north-western tip. Biggin Hill, on the southern plateau, was one of the RAF's principal Battle of Britain fighter stations and remains an aerodrome today. These places frame a borough that is, in its southern two-thirds, genuinely rural.

For a new-build scheme this context is directly planning-relevant. In the northern towns and suburbs — Bromley, Beckenham, Penge, Orpington's centre — new homes are judged mainly on character, density and amenity within an established residential grain. In the vast green belt to the south — Downe, Cudham, Chelsfield, Farnborough village, Keston, Pratt's Bottom, the farmland around Biggin Hill — the starting point is that a new home is inappropriate development and needs a special justification to succeed at all. Knowing which Bromley your plot sits in is the first and most consequential thing to establish, and it is why the location map matters so much on these projects.

The single most important local fact for a new-build in Bromley is the Metropolitan Green Belt, which covers roughly fifty-two per cent of the borough — around seventy-seven square kilometres of the fifty-nine-square-mile borough. Broadly, everything south of the A232–A21 route between West Wickham and Pratt's Bottom is green belt, and the council protects it robustly. National planning policy in the NPPF is unambiguous: the construction of new buildings in the green belt is 'inappropriate development', which is by definition harmful, and should not be approved except in a limited set of specified exceptions or where 'very special circumstances' clearly outweigh the harm.

For a new dwelling, that is a very high bar. A brand-new house on a green belt plot is not one of the ordinary exceptions and will almost always be refused unless it fits one of the narrow categories the NPPF allows. The exceptions most relevant to housing are: limited infilling in villages; the replacement of an existing building with one that is not materially larger than the one it replaces; limited affordable housing for local community needs; and, in the reformed NPPF, development on 'grey belt' land that meets a set of strict conditions. Outside those exceptions, a new home in the green belt needs 'very special circumstances' — a genuinely exceptional case — which is rare and hard to make.

The recent introduction of 'grey belt' has changed the conversation slightly but not fundamentally. Grey belt is previously developed or lower-quality green belt land that does not strongly serve the green belt's purposes; where it does, and where there is demonstrable unmet housing need, a sustainable location and compliance with the 'golden rules' on affordable housing and infrastructure, development can be acceptable. Bromley's own position, expressed through its emerging Local Plan review, is cautious: the council has signalled that grey belt should only be considered once all other options for meeting development needs have been explored, and it continues to prioritise brownfield land in the built-up north. So grey belt is not a general licence to build on green belt fields.

The practical effect is stark and worth being blunt about. If your plot is in the green belt, the honest starting point is that a new-build house is very unlikely to be acceptable unless it is a genuine replacement dwelling on the footprint of an existing home, a genuine infill within a defined village, or something that clears the very high grey-belt or very-special-circumstances bar. Two plots a few hundred metres apart — one just inside the built-up area, one just over the green belt line — can face completely opposite prospects. Establishing precisely where your plot sits relative to the green belt boundary, and which if any exception applies, is the very first thing we check, because getting it wrong is the most expensive mistake an owner can make in this borough.

For most people who want a new home on a green belt plot in Bromley, the only realistic route is a replacement dwelling — knocking down the existing house and building a new one in its place. This is one of the express exceptions to the green belt's presumption against new building, but it comes with a critical qualification: the NPPF allows the replacement of a building in the green belt only where the new building is in the same use and 'not materially larger' than the one it replaces. That phrase, and Bromley's interpretation of it, is where these schemes are won or lost.

Neither the NPPF nor the Local Plan puts an exact number on 'materially larger', which leaves it to the council's judgement on the facts of each case. In practice, planning authorities and appeal inspectors tend to treat increases somewhere in the region of a fifteen to thirty per cent uplift in floorspace or volume over the original as the zone in which 'materially larger' is argued — but there is no fixed figure, and a large increase in bulk, footprint, height or visual prominence can be 'material' even if the floor area looks modest, because the real test is the effect on the openness of the green belt. Openness — the absence of built form — is the fundamental quality the green belt exists to protect, so a replacement that is taller, wider, or more sprawling than the original can fail even where the numbers seem reasonable.

That has real design consequences. A successful replacement dwelling in Bromley's green belt is one that respects the scale, footprint, height and siting of the house it replaces, avoids sprawling extensions and outbuildings that eat into open land, and is designed so that its impact on openness is no greater — ideally less — than what was there before. Digging down for a basement, which adds accommodation without adding visible bulk, is often part of the answer. So is careful massing that keeps the ridge height and the built footprint close to the original. We measure the existing house accurately (the 'original' building, as first built or as it stood on a relevant date, not a much-extended version) and design the replacement around a defensible comparison.

It is also worth being clear about what counts as the building being replaced. The comparison is with the original dwelling, and where a house has itself been much extended over the years, the council may look back to the original form rather than the enlarged one, which can reduce the size you are allowed to replace it with. And the exception applies to replacing a dwelling with a dwelling — you cannot use it to replace an outbuilding, a barn or a derelict non-residential structure with a new house; that is a change of use and a new dwelling, not a replacement. We check the planning history and the lawful status of the existing building carefully before advising on a replacement scheme, because the baseline you are replacing determines everything.

In the built-up north of the borough, the most common new-build opportunity is a plot carved out of an existing garden or a piece of 'backland' — the land behind existing houses, often accessed by a narrow drive between them. Bromley's Local Plan addresses this directly through its backland and garden-land development policy, and the borough's stance is deliberately cautious. The council recognises that gardens and backland make a real contribution to local character, biodiversity and the spacious, green feel of the borough's suburbs, and it is alert to the risk that a drip-feed of small infill developments could erode that character over time.

The policy allows residential development on backland and garden land only where it meets specific criteria, and it is refused outright in certain designated character areas where the council has decided such development would be harmful. Where it is considered, the test is essentially about fit: the new home has to respect the established pattern of development, and the Local Plan expects the spatial standards of new development — plot width, garden depth and plot ratio — to accord with the general pattern in the area, with residential density in keeping with what already exists rather than a step-change up. In other words, you cannot cram a house onto a slice of garden that is narrower, shallower or more tightly packed than the surrounding grain.

Beyond the pattern test, garden and backland schemes have to overcome a familiar set of practical objections. Access is often the hardest: a new home behind existing houses needs a safe vehicular and pedestrian access, adequate visibility, and a drive that does not harm the amenity of the houses it passes between. Overlooking and loss of privacy — of the new home and of its neighbours — has to be designed out. Trees, which are abundant and often protected in Bromley's suburbs, frequently constrain where a house can sit and how deep its foundations can go. And the loss of the garden itself, and its greenery, has to be justified against the character policy. Any one of these can sink a scheme.

None of this means garden and backland development is impossible in Bromley — plenty of well-designed infill homes are approved every year — but it does mean the plot has to genuinely suit a new home, and the design has to be led by the constraints rather than by the wish to maximise. The schemes that succeed are the ones that sit comfortably within the existing grain: a house of a scale, plot width and garden depth that matches its neighbours, with a workable access, protected trees, and no unacceptable overlooking. We test all of that at feasibility, honestly, before you commit to a design, because a garden plot that looks developable on a map can fail on any one of access, trees, privacy or character.

A new-build application in Bromley is judged against the Bromley Local Plan, adopted on 16 January 2019, and knowing which policies apply lets us build the application around them. The Local Plan's residential design and general design policies run through every new-build decision: development is expected to be of a high standard, to complement and respond to local character and the setting of any heritage assets, and to protect the residential amenity of both future occupiers and neighbours. In a borough whose defining quality is its spacious, low-rise suburban and semi-rural character, 'responding to local character' is not a soft aspiration — it is the test most new-build refusals turn on.

The density and layout policies matter just as much. Rather than pushing a fixed density figure, Bromley's approach is to require new residential development to accord with the density and spatial standards existing in the area — plot width, garden depth, plot ratio, spacing between buildings, building line and height. The borough's suburbs are predominantly low-density, and the council resists 'town cramming' and the over-development of plots. A new home that is taller, wider, deeper or more tightly packed than its neighbours, or that leaves an inadequate garden, is very likely to be found contrary to policy however good the architecture. Higher-density housing is instead directed to the town centres and the most accessible locations.

Residential amenity is the third recurring theme. The Local Plan protects neighbours from overlooking and loss of privacy, from overbearing bulk and massing, from loss of light, and from an overshadowing or dominating impact. Case officers scrutinise the classic amenity issues closely — the distance to habitable-room windows, the angle of a new flank wall, the height of a two-storey element close to a boundary, the outlook from a neighbour's garden. For the new home itself, the Local Plan and the London Plan set standards for internal space, light, outlook and private amenity space, so the house has to be a good home as well as a good neighbour.

Two further Bromley features shape new-build design. First, trees: the borough is heavily treed and makes extensive use of Tree Preservation Orders and conservation-area protections, and a mature tree can dictate where a house sits, how it is founded, and whether the scheme is acceptable at all — an arboricultural assessment is often essential. Second, the borough's conservation areas and its many listed and locally listed buildings, particularly in the older village cores and the town centre, bring heritage tests into play where a new home would affect their setting. We frame the design and the supporting statements around each of these policy themes so the case officer can find the scheme compliant point by point.

A new home in Bromley 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-bed four-person at least 70, and larger homes proportionately more, with minimum bedroom sizes, minimum storage and a minimum floor-to-ceiling height on top.

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 — higher than the 2.3 metre national minimum — which affects section design and, on a tight site, the overall height of the building. It expects homes to be dual-aspect wherever possible and to minimise single-aspect dwellings, especially north-facing or noise-exposed ones. 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 a sensible minimum depth and width — so a new home needs a usable garden, terrace or balcony, not just 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 Bromley: tight garden and backland plots, and schemes that split a plot into two or more homes. On those sites, meeting the space standard, the ceiling height, the dual-aspect preference and the private amenity space at the same time as fitting within the area's plot width and garden depth can quickly show that a plot supports fewer homes than the owner hoped. Testing the plot against the standards at feasibility is how we give you an honest unit count before you design.

The standards also interact with the character and amenity policies in a way that is easy to underestimate. 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.

There is one further route to a genuinely new home in Bromley's countryside, and it is worth understanding even though it is rarely used: the 'exceptional design' exception in paragraph 84 of the NPPF (the provision formerly numbered 79, and before that 55, and popularly associated with Channel 4's Grand Designs). This allows an isolated new home in the countryside where the design is 'of exceptional quality', meaning it is truly outstanding, reflects the highest standards in architecture, would help raise design standards in rural areas more generally, and would significantly enhance its immediate setting while being sensitive to the defining characteristics of the local area.

It is a deliberately high and narrow test. 'Exceptional quality' means exactly that — a home that is merely attractive, well-built or environmentally sound is not enough; the bar is architectural excellence of a kind that a design review panel and, often, an appeal inspector will recognise as genuinely outstanding. These schemes typically involve a bespoke, highly considered design, an ambitious sustainability strategy, careful integration into the landscape, and a rigorous justification of why the house is exceptional. They are commissioned by people willing to invest in real design quality and to accept a demanding and uncertain planning process.

In Bromley the paragraph 84 route is complicated by the green belt, because most of the borough's countryside is green belt as well as countryside, and paragraph 84 does not by itself override the green belt's presumption against inappropriate development. So a paragraph 84 house on green belt land still has to grapple with green belt harm and, usually, very special circumstances — which makes an already hard route harder. In practice these houses are more readily achieved on land that is countryside but not green belt; in Bromley that is limited, so paragraph 84 is a genuine but unusual option here.

We are honest with clients about paragraph 84: it is a real route to an extraordinary home, and we can design and pursue one, but it is not a shortcut around the green belt or a way to build an ordinary house in the countryside. It suits a specific client with a specific ambition and budget, and it demands a design of exceptional calibre and a carefully constructed planning case. For most people who want a new home on a rural Bromley plot, the replacement-dwelling route is the realistic one; paragraph 84 is for the rare project where the design ambition genuinely justifies it.

Once the principle is settled, the design of the home has to do two things at once: sit comfortably within Bromley's character and constraints, and be a genuinely good place to live that meets the space standards. On these plots 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 and garden depth 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 a low-rise 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 or backland plot, keeping the built footprint modest, holding a generous garden, 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 basement or a carefully handled roof space can add accommodation without adding the bulk that would breach the character and green belt tests.

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 that 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 Bromley's ground conditions and, above all, its trees frequently dictate what the foundations have to be.

The borough sits largely on the clay and gravel geology of south-east London and north Kent, and much of it is heavily treed. Shrinkable clay soils combined with nearby trees are the classic recipe for foundation problems: as trees take up and release moisture, clay can shrink and swell, and a shallow foundation near a mature tree can heave or subside. That is why new homes on these sites so often need deeper foundations — trench fill taken down 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 and an assessment of the trees, and it has a real cost implication that we flag early.

Above ground, the frame has to be designed for the actual house. Most new homes in Bromley 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 the site favours them. The structural design covers the loadbearing walls, 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, waterproofing and the effect on neighbouring foundations need careful design and, sometimes, 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 basement, if any, is engineered from the start; 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.

Heating and hot water are the biggest change. 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. 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) that recovers warmth from the outgoing air. Overheating is now a regulated concern too (Part O), so window sizing, shading and purge ventilation are designed to keep the home comfortable in summer as well as warm in winter. These decisions interact with the architecture, which is why we resolve them together.

The rest of the services complete the home: a full electrical design with adequate circuits and provision for an electric-vehicle charge point (now expected on new homes with parking); the incoming water supply and internal plumbing; the foul and surface-water drainage; and, increasingly, on-site renewable electricity, with the emerging regulations pushing solar photovoltaic panels onto new homes as standard. We coordinate all of it so the plant space, the loft or cupboard for the heat pump cylinder and the MVHR, the riser routes and the external units are all designed in from the start — because retrofitting them into a house designed without them is exactly the kind of 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, 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 direction of travel is the Future Homes Standard, the government's programme to make new homes 'zero-carbon ready'. The response and final Approved Documents were published in early 2026, with the standard coming into force in 2027, and its effect is decisive: the carbon targets are set at a level that no fossil-fuel boiler — gas, oil, LPG or 'hydrogen-ready' — can meet, so new homes will be heated by heat pumps or heat networks, built to a high-performance fabric, and fitted with on-site renewable generation. The emerging rules also make solar photovoltaic panels effectively standard on new homes. New homes designed today should be designed with this in mind, so they are not obsolete before they are 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 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.

We prepare or commission the SAP assessment as part of the design so that compliance is demonstrated by design rather than discovered at building control, and we can 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 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, and we help you make that call with the costs and benefits laid out.

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 the Local Plan 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.

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 and attenuation storage to slow and reduce the runoff, ideally getting as close as possible to the greenfield runoff rate. On Bromley's clay soils, 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 — river corridors such as the Ravensbourne and its tributaries, 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, or, on isolated rural plots without a mains connection (not uncommon in the green belt villages), a private treatment system such as a package treatment plant, which brings its own regulatory requirements. 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.

Many Bromley new-builds — replacement dwellings especially — start with demolishing an existing house, 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.

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), 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 dealt with separately, but it is essential to a lawful, dispute-free build.

Trees are the other pre-build issue that catches people out. Bromley protects trees extensively through Tree Preservation Orders and conservation-area rules, and 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 the 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 Bromley two CILs apply. The Mayor of London's CIL (MCIL2, in force since 1 April 2019) is charged across the borough to help fund Crossrail and, in due course, other strategic transport; Bromley falls in the Mayoral middle band, charged at a rate in the region of seventy pounds per square metre (the figure is index-linked and rises over time). On top of that, Bromley adopted its own borough CIL following examination in 2021, charged on residential development to fund local infrastructure at rates set out in its 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 Bromley new-build the levies are 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 borough), 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 (Stages 4 onward) — means the drawings evolve from testing the principle, to the planning application, to a fully coordinated set the builder works from, with each stage building on the last rather than starting again.

The planning drawing package for a new home normally includes: an accurate site survey and location plan; existing site plans and, on a replacement scheme, existing plans, elevations and sections of the house being demolished; and then the proposed drawings — site plan, 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 standard, 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 the Local Plan, London Plan and green belt policies; and the technical assessments the specific site calls for — an arboricultural report where trees are affected, a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy where relevant, a heritage statement where a conservation area or listed setting is engaged, a highways or access statement for a new or altered access, and ecology, contamination or noise assessments where the site demands them. On a green belt or replacement scheme, the openness and 'not materially larger' argument is made explicitly.

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 green belt comparison matches the demolition drawings. 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, check it against the green belt boundary, the backland and garden-land policy, the character and density policies, and the site constraints (trees, flood risk, access, neighbours), and we test what the plot 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 Bromley 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 extension of time can lengthen that. Bromley offers a pre-application advice service, which is frequently worthwhile on a new-build — particularly on a green belt, replacement, backland or heritage-sensitive scheme — because a written steer on the principle and the design before you submit is far cheaper than a refusal.

During determination the case officer consults neighbours and statutory consultees, assesses the scheme against the development plan, and either recommends approval (often with conditions, and on larger schemes a Section 106 agreement) or refusal. 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. Many of Bromley's difficult new-build decisions, especially in the green belt, are ultimately tested at appeal, and a scheme designed and evidenced with that in mind stands the best chance.

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 Bromley depends on the plot, the complexity and the constraints — a straightforward infill on a benign plot is a very different exercise from a green belt replacement dwelling with trees, a basement, a flood constraint and a heritage 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.

Separate from our design fee, you should budget for the council's planning application fee (set nationally, and higher for a new dwelling than for a householder extension), 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, heritage, highways, ecology, contamination or noise as applicable. On top of the consenting costs come the levies: the Mayoral and Bromley 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 green belt, 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. 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 the green belt or the character 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, openness or amenity; and on foundations, drainage 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 Bromley is the best way to make sure yours does not. By far the most common reason, given how much of the borough is green belt, is inappropriate development in the green belt — a new home proposed where the presumption against building applies and no exception or very special circumstances have been made out, or a replacement dwelling judged 'materially larger' than the original and harmful to openness. These refusals are often about principle, which is why we test the principle first and design replacements to a defensible comparison.

In the built-up areas the leading reasons are about character and over-development: a new home out of keeping with the density, plot width, garden depth or building line of the area; a backland or garden plot judged to erode the local character the Local Plan protects; a design too bulky, too tall or too dominant for its context. Close behind come residential amenity refusals — overlooking and loss of privacy, an overbearing impact on a neighbour, loss of light — and refusals on the practicalities of a cramped plot: inadequate access, insufficient parking, poor outlook or an undersized garden for the new home.

Trees and heritage account for another band of refusals. A scheme that would harm a protected tree, or that cannot be built without excavating within a tree's root protection area, will struggle; so will a new home that harms the setting of a listed building or the character of a conservation area. Technical grounds — inadequate surface-water drainage, unaddressed flood risk, an unsafe access, missing information — round out the list, and 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 (and the green belt position) 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 green belt fact, 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 Bromley 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 Bromley context specifically: the extent and the strictness of the Metropolitan Green Belt that covers more than half the borough, the replacement-dwelling and infill exceptions and how to design within them, the Local Plan's backland, garden-land, density and character policies, the London Plan space standards, and the trees, clay soils and flood constraints that shape real schemes here. We use that knowledge to give you honest advice at feasibility — 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 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 green belt or character 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 appeal, because in this borough that is sometimes where new-build decisions are settled.

We also stay with the project after the drawings are done. We manage the application through Bromley's determination, respond to the case officer and to neighbours' objections, negotiate where that will secure approval, and once consent is granted carry the scheme through to the building-regulations approval, the structural and services design, the SAP compliance and the construction information your builder needs — discharging the pre-commencement conditions along the way. The aim is a single, accountable point of contact from the first survey to a finished, consented, buildable home.

If you are thinking about building a new home in Bromley — an infill plot, a garden or backland site, a knock-down-and-rebuild, or a genuine one-off in the countryside — 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.