Dormer, mansard, hip-to-gable, L-shape or rooflight-only Velux work, drawn for the roof you actually have. Certificate route or planning application, building regulations, the structural calculations, the party wall notices: one number covers all of it.
Cautiously. The Datahub records 2,296 rear dormer applications at 64% approved and 1,700 loft conversions at 67% — both below the London pattern — and Greenwich approved just 70.7% of householder applications overall, twelve points under the capital’s figure. It issued 1,228 lawful development certificates over the same period.
| Measure | Greenwich | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Rear dormer applications in the Datahub | 2,296 | 64% approved |
| Loft conversion applications in the Datahub | 1,700 | 67% approved |
| Mansard roof applications in the Datahub | 144 | 53% approved |
| Householder decisions | 2,301 | 70.7% approved |
| Lawful development certificates issued | 1,228 | — |
| Conservation areas | 14 | 884 hectares |
Sources: rows one to three from the Planning London Datahub, retrieved 15 August 2026 — phrase-matched descriptions, comparable within Greenwich only. Rows four and five from MHCLG PS1 and PS2, twelve quarters to March 2026. Row six from planning.data.gov.uk, retrieved 1 September 2026. Greenwich has few conservation areas but they are large: fourteen designations cover 884 hectares, including the World Heritage Site around the town centre.
In Greenwich — Georgian in Greenwich town centre; Victorian terraces in East Greenwich for the most part — a loft conversion drawings package is the full measured-survey-to-submission drawing set Royal Borough of Greenwich needs in order to determine an application: existing and proposed plans, elevations and sections at 1:100 and 1:50, a location and site plan, and the supporting statements the case officer asks for.
Prepared and reviewed by the chartered technologist team at Architectural Drawings London — MCIAT chartered, £2m PI insured.Last reviewed 2026-08-03.
Every loft type across every Greenwich roof line — dormer, mansard, hip-to-gable, L-shape, Velux. LDC or full planning route, building regulations, structural calculations and party wall notices, all fixed price.
Housing stock in Greenwich: Georgian in Greenwich town centre; Victorian terraces in East Greenwich, Charlton; inter-war semi-detached in Eltham; new-build along the riverside.
Character: World Heritage Site status in Greenwich town centre adds heritage weight; outer borough areas (Eltham, Thamesmead) generally permissive.
Whether a roof here has the height and the frame to take a conversion is settled during the survey, before any price is quoted.
Where the work qualifies as permitted development, a Lawful Development Certificate puts it beyond argument when the house is sold; 1,228 certificate applications were recorded here in the three years ending March 2026 (MHCLG planning statistics, retrieved 1 September 2026). Any Article 4 direction and the conservation boundary get checked before that route is assumed.
Option studies including massing, internal layout and roof geometry.
Four regulations decide a loft: Part K on the new stair, Part B on escape, Part L on insulation and Part E on sound between separate homes.
New ridge beam, purlin support, dormer framing and joists sized to carry a floor rather than a loft, each member calculated and stamped by a chartered engineer.
Putting steel over a shared wall means serving notices. We prepare and serve them, then deal with whichever surveyor the neighbour appoints.
Single planning or regs submission.
Planning + building regs + structural.
Listed, conservation, complex sites.
Move the controls for an indicative figure. It anchors your budget — it is not a quote. Every project is priced after a free survey.
Build costs are separate and quoted by your contractor. See our published fees.
The districts of this borough we draw in, the dominant housing type in each, and the office that validates a conversion at that address. Every fee column below is the 2026 statutory England scale, not our charge.
| Postcode | Area | Dominant stock | What it means for a loft conversion |
|---|---|---|---|
| SE2 | Abbey Wood | Georgian in Greenwich town centre; Victorian terraces in East Greenwich | Abbey Wood in SE2 runs into Bexley, so the determining authority is confirmed street by street before drawings go out. |
| SE3 | Blackheath / Kidbrooke | Georgian villas, Victorian terraces | Blackheath and Kidbrooke sit across the SE3 boundary with Lewisham, so the address is matched to a policies map before submission. |
| SE7 | Charlton | Victorian villas, 1930s semi-detached | SE7 is Charlton alone, handled by this council, whose officers apply the conservation mapping drawn for that district. |
| SE9 | Eltham / Mottingham | 1930s semi-detached, post-war flats | SE9 through Eltham and Mottingham is shared with Bromley, and which council decides follows the plot itself. |
| SE10 | Greenwich | Georgian terraces, listed buildings | SE10 falls entirely inside the borough, where the town centre designations bear directly on any alteration to a roof. |
| SE18 | Woolwich / Plumstead | Georgian fragments, post-war estates, new-build | Woolwich and Plumstead lie wholly within SE18, so every loft submitted from there is validated by Greenwich. |
| SE28 | Thamesmead | Post-war estates, new-build | SE28 covers Thamesmead only; the council handles those applications, and riverside plots there raise the flood-zone question too. |
A roof's pitch, the wall carrying it and the length of plot behind it all change street by street here, and each shifts what a conversion can deliver.
How designation changes a Greenwich loft conversion: Greenwich Council maintains 20 conservation areas, including Eltham Park, Greenwich Town Centre (World Heritage Site), Blackheath. Inside any of them a Greenwich loft conversion cannot rely on permitted development, and the route becomes a £548 householder application determined in 8 weeks rather than a £249 prior approval in 6 weeks. Greenwich Town Centre (World Heritage Site) sets the tone for Greenwich casework.
No blanket direction over the borough: permitted development has not been withdrawn wholesale here, so a loft outside a conservation area generally keeps it, and the £274 certificate is the document an SE2 owner wants on file. Decisions land quickly too: 1,724 of 1,837 householder cases outside performance agreements were decided within eight weeks, 93.8% where the 33 boroughs pooled sit at 92.5% (MHCLG planning statistics, retrieved 1 September 2026). The tail is short but real, with 7 householder decisions taking more than a year.
What Greenwich is built from: Georgian in Greenwich town centre; Victorian terraces in East Greenwich, Charlton; inter-war semi-detached in Eltham; new-build along the riverside. World Heritage Site status in Greenwich town centre adds heritage weight; outer borough areas (Eltham, Thamesmead) generally permissive. That mix decides the loft conversion route in Greenwich more than the postcode does, and it is what a Greenwich Council case officer reads first. A householder application costs £548 paid to Greenwich Council direct, with 8 weeks to a decision once validated.
Sources for this Greenwich loft conversion page: borough policies maps and conservation-area registers (2025–26), Royal Mail postcode district boundaries, the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications) (England) Regulations, the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 as amended, and the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
Of 57 certificate appeals decided here between 2016 and 2026, 27 were allowed and 30 dismissed, a success rate of 47.4% against 37.5% across London. None of those is a refused loft design. Each is an argument about whether the work needed permission in the first place, which is precisely the dispute a certificate exists to prevent, and the reason we would rather establish lawfulness on paper before anyone builds.
Those certificate appeals took a median of 228 days to decide, counted from the day each appeal opened and added to whatever the council had already used. 94.7% ran on written representations, so nobody stood up to explain the scheme: the drawings did the explaining.
Figures cover 57 lawful development certificate appeals decided in this borough. Source: Planning Inspectorate casework, open data under OGL v3.0.
What owners in this borough ask before they instruct anybody, answered with figures rather than with reassurance.
Start a free quote →Permitted development for a loft is governed by volume: a terrace gets 40 cubic metres, a semi or detached house 50, with matching materials and the dormer held 20cm back from the eaves. Flats carry no such rights, and neither do listed buildings or houses inside a conservation area, where a full application takes over. Eligibility is checked at the free survey visit.
A loft here carries an architectural cost and a construction cost. The first is ours and fixed: consent route, building regulations, structural calculations. The second belongs to the builder and follows the roof form you settle on, since a dormer is appreciably cheaper to build than a mansard on an identical house.
Mansards are not part of the traditional roofscape across most of this borough, so each is assessed on its own merits rather than against precedent. A rear mansard on a terrace or semi that follows the neighbouring roof line, supported by heritage commentary where the setting calls for it, has a fair chance of consent.
The practical minimum is 2.3m taken from the ceiling joists to the underside of the ridge. Below 2.2m the options narrow to lowering the ceilings underneath, which costs you the rooms below, or rebuilding the roof entirely as a mansard.
Most Greenwich loft conversions trigger Party Wall Act notices — legal notices to all adjoining owners. Rear dormers can also prompt right-to-light considerations in dense terraced streets, particularly in Greenwich Town Centre (World Heritage Site). We handle both processes.
Greenwich's georgian in Greenwich town centre stock lends itself to rear dormers (most common), hip-to-gable (semi-detached), and mansard (period terraces and conservation contexts). Velux-only conversions are possible where ridge height allows. We recommend the best structural and planning route at survey.
We cover all Greenwich postcodes — SE3, SE7, SE9, SE10, SE18, SE28 — with surveyors based locally. Survey appointments within 3 working days. Our structural engineer is London-based and attends site when required.
Where a beam bears onto a party wall, or that wall is raised, the adjoining owner must be given notice and 14 days in which to answer. Silence counts as a dispute, so notices should go out well ahead of the build programme, not alongside it.
If your property sits on a boundary, here are the neighbouring options.
Surveying, drawings, structural calculations and the building control submission for a Greenwich address all come from the same chartered team on one instruction.
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