House Extensions in Woolwich SE18 — Prior Approval Instead of Full Permission
In much of Woolwich you can still extend without a full planning application. That is not true of most of south east London any more.
Greenwich publishes every application it receives, and those lists are worth reading. They show Woolwich owners using the prior approval route for a house extension of five or six metres at the rear, and certificates of lawfulness for loft work. Both routes are quicker and cheaper than a full planning application.
Which of those routes a house extension needs depends on your street and on the house itself. Design And Build works across SE18. Every discipline the job needs sits inside the same firm under one agreement — the drawings, the calculations, the neighbour notices and the construction.
Which route does your extension actually need?
Five metres, six metres and prior approval
A house extension can take one of three routes. Full planning permission is the one most people have heard of. Permitted development means no application is needed at all. Prior approval sits in between the two.
Prior approval lets you build a deeper single storey rear extension than the standard limits would allow. The council writes to your neighbours and waits to hear what they say. Greenwich’s own published lists show Woolwich addresses using this route at five metres and at six. It is not available everywhere, and on designated land it cannot be used.
Certificates of lawfulness, and what a buyer’s solicitor asks for
If your work genuinely needs no permission, you can still ask the council to confirm that in writing. It is called a lawful development certificate.
It costs a few hundred pounds and takes about eight weeks. When you come to sell, the buyer’s solicitor will ask whether the extension was lawful, and this certificate is the document that answers the question. Greenwich lists show Woolwich owners obtaining them for loft conversions and dormers. We apply for one whenever a scheme qualifies.
Two storeys at the back, or sideways
Bigger work needs full permission, and plenty of it happens here. The published lists include a two storey rear infill extension, a double storey side extension, and one house divided into two with a new house built where the garage stood.
A semi-detached house with access down the side can grow outwards as well as backwards, whereas a mid terrace only has one direction to go in. Our architects look at what the plot allows before drawing anything, because the shape of the site decides more than the budget does.
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Ask what is under the ground before you price the job
Reclaimed alluvial land within 500 metres of the Thames
The streets nearest the river sit on reclaimed land. Under them is soft alluvial clay, and below that stiffer London Clay.
Soft ground does not carry weight the way firm ground does, so a foundation designed for the streets behind the town centre, towards Eltham, may not work three hundred metres closer to the water. This is the single biggest cost difference between two Woolwich houses that look alike.
Trench fill or bored piles, and what decides it
Most extensions here sit on trench fill foundations, poured concrete in a dug trench. On the reclaimed ground that can mean going down between one and a half and two and a half metres.
Where the soft layer runs deeper, piles are used instead. These are bored shafts, sometimes three to six metres down, reaching the firmer clay below. Piles cost more than trench fill, and finding out you need them after the price has been agreed costs a good deal more again.
What a ground investigation settles
A ground investigation is a small survey in which someone drills or digs, takes samples, and reports back on what is down there and how deep the firm ground sits.
On a house near the river it is worth doing before the contract is signed rather than after. Our structural engineers read the result and design the foundation to it, so the figure you are given is the figure you pay.
Woolwich builders working across three very different wards
The Article 4 catches the front, not the back
Some Woolwich streets have an Article 4 Direction. That is a rule the council adds which takes away permitted development rights on certain kinds of work.
Where they apply here, they are generally aimed at what you can see from the street: cladding, replacement windows, roof materials. Rear extensions and loft conversions are usually left alone. That is the pattern, not a guarantee, so we check the address against Greenwich’s records before quoting.
Front dormers in the Royal Arsenal designation
The Royal Arsenal conservation area covers the old military buildings and the streets between the station and the river, running west towards Charlton. Inside it the rules are tighter.
A dormer on the front is very unlikely to be approved at all. One at the back has to be smaller than the roof it sits in and built in materials that match the original. Every application there is looked at individually by the conservation team, so the design has to answer that before it is submitted.
Renovation means two different jobs in SE18
Rewiring, replumbing and lead supply pipes
Behind the town centre are Victorian terraces and Edwardian semis, many never fully modernised. A full refurbishment there means new wiring throughout and new pipework.
In houses built before about 1970 the incoming water pipe is often lead, and it gets replaced as part of the job. Damp gets treated at the cause rather than the symptom. After that the ground floor is opened up, a new kitchen and bathroom go in, and the whole house is replastered and decorated.
Leasehold work, and who has to agree
By the river the job is completely different. Royal Arsenal Riverside alone holds more than five thousand flats, many of them inside converted munitions buildings.
A flat has no permitted development rights anywhere in England. What matters instead is your lease, your freeholder and the managing agent. Anything structural needs their written permission first. Leases here vary a great deal, so we read yours before pricing rather than assuming. Bring interior design in at that point, while the layout is still open.
What the town centre streets need most
Across both kinds of property, the work that matters least on a photograph matters most in the house. Insulation, heating that suits the building, sound between rooms, and services that will last.
Doing it all at once costs more on the day and less overall. Nothing gets opened up twice, and nothing is torn out a year later to reach something behind it.
Greenwich sends applications back for one reason more than any other
The validation checklist, item by item
Before the council looks at whether your extension is a good idea, someone checks the paperwork is complete. If anything is missing, the application is returned before it starts.
The council publishes exactly what it needs: drawings at the right scale, existing and proposed plans, elevations, sections, a site plan, and certain statements depending on the work. Guessing at that list is the most common reason a Woolwich application loses a month.
One firm from first drawing to handover
Most homeowners hire four separate firms: someone to draw it, someone to prove the structure, someone for the neighbour notices, and someone to build it. That arrangement works perfectly well until something falls into the gap between one firm and the next.
Here all four sit inside one construction company. One price, one programme, one person to call. Neighbour notices are prepared and served by our own surveyors. In a terrace or a semi, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is triggered by nearly every structural job, and it has to be dealt with before work begins.
Area We Cover
Send us your Woolwich address
Send us the property details along with a note of what you have in mind. We will check which route your work needs, whether an Article 4 or the conservation area reaches your street, what the ground is likely to be, and what your lease allows if you own a flat.
After that the work is written up item by item, each one carrying its own figure. We cover Woolwich, Woolwich Common, the Dockyard streets, Royal Arsenal Riverside and the town centre, plus Greenwich, Abbey Wood and the rest of south east London.
The survey costs nothing. In Woolwich it starts by finding out whether you need permission at all.
