Ealing is west London at its most suburban, mile after mile of terraces and semis through Ealing, Acton, Southall, Greenford and Hanwell, and hardly a street without a rear extension or a loft conversion going up somewhere on it. The council refuses a great many of them, across the board, full applications and the permitted-development route alike. If yours has been turned down, the decision on appeal passes out of the council’s hands to an independent inspector, and a good many Ealing refusals do not survive the move.
If Ealing has refused your rear extension, loft or dormer, a first-floor addition or a larger single-storey extension under the prior-approval scheme, send us the decision notice and your plans and we will give you an honest view, at no charge, on whether it is worth appealing. If it is, we will run the whole appeal for a fixed fee of £399, with no hidden extras, and we win more than half of the appeals we take on.
Is it worth appealing?
We will tell you before you spend anything. Not every refusal is worth the effort, but a good many of Ealing’s are, because so many come down to a matter of judgement, the effect on a neighbour’s light, the size of a dormer, the look of a rear extension, and judgement is what an independent inspector is there to weigh afresh. Refusals that read firmly on the decision notice often soften once someone has stood in the neighbour’s garden and looked for themselves.
Nationally about a third of appeals succeed; ours do better, at more than half, and Ealing is a borough we appeal in regularly, so we know how its refusals tend to run and where an inspector will part company with the council.
Why Ealing refuses so much
Ealing is big and densely built, and most of what it handles is householders wanting more room: a rear extension, a loft with a dormer, a first floor over an outrigger. It judges them against its design guidance and a set of familiar rules, side extensions set back a metre, dormers kept subordinate, a 45-degree line drawn from a neighbour’s window to protect their light. A scheme that misses one of those is liable to be refused. The council sometimes applies the 45-degree rule mechanically, even to windows it was never meant for, such as bathrooms; and it refuses larger single-storey extensions under the prior-approval scheme on grounds of character or size, when that route only lets it weigh the effect on the neighbours. Both kinds of refusal are regularly overturned on appeal.
A few recent Ealing wins
We win a lot of appeals in Ealing. A large single-storey rear extension refused under the prior-approval scheme was allowed once the inspector confirmed the council could only weigh the neighbours’ light, and that it caused no real harm. A hip-to-gable loft conversion in Greenford was refused over the size of its rear dormer, and allowed because the dormer matched the many others on the street. And a first-floor extension in Southall was refused on the strength of a 45-degree daylight line the council had drawn from a neighbour’s bathroom window, which the inspector gave short shrift. Rear extensions, loft dormers and prior-approval schemes are the staple of what we do in Ealing, and the kind of refusal that most often comes undone in front of an inspector.
What we actually do
Almost every householder appeal in Ealing is dealt with in writing, so there is nothing for you to attend and no hearing to sit through. Send us the refusal and the drawings, and we build the written case that works through the council’s reasons one at a time and puts the policy, the guidance and the facts before the inspector, who then visits the site and decides. Getting that written case right is what wins the appeal, and it is what your £399 covers. If you would rather understand the process first, our guide to how to win a planning appeal walks through it, and appeal or reapply is there if you cannot decide between the two.
Refused in Ealing? Send us the notice.
You have twelve weeks from the date on a householder decision notice to appeal, and six months for most other applications, so you have room to think it over. But an appeal is only as strong as the case behind it, and the sooner we see the paperwork the sooner we can start building one. Send us the decision notice and your plans and we will tell you, for free, what we think; if it is worth appealing, the fee is £399.
