Measured Building Surveys · W5 Ealing
Ealing applies conservation control across several W5 villa suburbs; the large plots make rear and side extensions a strong local market.
One district is covered here. For the borough as a whole — fees, timescales, and where Ealing currently stands — see measured building surveys in Ealing.
A measured survey records the Ealing property exactly as built: every wall, every opening, the levels and the boundaries, which together are the base the design sits on. On the older terraces and villas around Ealing Broadway, Pitshanger and Montpelier, square walls and level floors are the exception rather than the rule, and laser measurement catches the discrepancy long before the council opens the file.
Laser measurement with the Leica Disto, BLK360 scanning where the geometry warrants it, AutoCAD and Revit files at the end of it, MCIAT chartered throughout.
Across Ealing, Ealing Broadway, Pitshanger, Montpelier in W5, the dominant property is substantial edwardian and victorian villas and semis, inter-war housing and mansion blocks across ealing, 'queen of the suburbs'. That stock shapes what measured building survey looks like here: the right approach for a period terrace differs from a mansion-block flat or a new-build, and Ealing Council judges each on design quality and neighbour impact. We survey the specific Ealing property, confirm the planning route — Permitted Development, a Lawful Development Certificate, or full planning — and draw a council-ready set tailored to the W5 streetscape.
Housing stock in W5: substantial Edwardian and Victorian villas and semis, inter-war housing, and mansion blocks along the main roads through Ealing — the 'Queen of the Suburbs'.
Within the district: Ealing, Ealing Broadway, Pitshanger, Montpelier.
Streets we know in W5: the Pitshanger and Montpelier roads, Mount Park Road, Castlebar Road and Hamilton Road. Each road has its own building line, boundary treatment and precedent that Ealing Council weighs when assessing a measured building survey scheme.
Conservation areas: Ealing Green, Montpelier, Pitshanger and Mount Park. Within their boundaries almost any external change means a full application with a heritage statement attached to it.
Getting around W5: Ealing Broadway serves the Central, District and Elizabeth lines, with National Rail alongside them.
Regeneration: W5 lies inside or alongside the Ealing Broadway and Elizabeth line growth area, whose policies reach design expectations well beyond the town centre itself.
Property values: the Land Registry's price-paid returns give W5 a 2025 median of £625,000 across 569 recorded sales — firmer than any bracket, and the figure we work from.
Ealing’s side of the ledger: in the three-year window MHCLG reports, closing March 2026, the London Borough of Ealing decided 3,182 applications from householders and refused 427 of them. It does that across a stock of 149,870 homes recorded by the Valuation Office at 31 March 2025. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
The depths that decide the route: where permitted development survives in W5, Class A of the 2015 order lets a single-storey rear extension run 3 m beyond the original back wall of a semi or terrace and 4 m beyond a detached house, with eaves held to 3 m within 2 m of a boundary. A measured survey is what establishes where that original wall actually stands on a villa already added to twice.
Borough character: leafy outer west London. Heritage control bites hardest inside a conservation area, and Bedford Park — which sits in W4 on the Chiswick edge rather than in W5 — is the strictest of them. Away from designations the borough has been comparatively permissive.
The technologist visiting the Ealing property is chartered, and brings a Leica Disto with a BLK360 alongside it. Ninety minutes covers a two or three-bed terrace.
Everything is drafted in AutoCAD or Revit and issued at 1:50 or 1:100, inside a 3mm tolerance. Rooms, openings, fittings, service runs: all annotated, none of them assumed.
All four elevations, plus cross-sections. An Ealing application needs them, the engineer needs them, and so does anybody drafting an award between neighbouring owners.
Point-cloud scanning earns its place on W5's period villas, on listed buildings, and anywhere the shape of the place resists straight measurement between two points.
DWG, RVT, PDF and IFC come as standard, which keeps the file usable by whoever handles it next: the architect, the engineer, or the contractor pricing the job.
The accuracy report is in RICS form — 3mm between any two points, 5mm over the building overall. Validation officers accept it; so do insurers; and an award drafted by a party wall surveyor can rest on it.
Single planning or building-regs submission.
Planning + building regs + structural.
Listed, conservation or complex sites.
Because W5 is full of large Edwardian and Victorian villas and semis on generous plots around Pitshanger and Montpelier, which suit rear, side and two-storey extensions and substantial loft conversions as households grow. We have drawn the range here to Ealing's own standards, on the permitted route and on full planning both.
The Elizabeth line at Ealing Broadway has shortened journeys right across the capital and reinforced W5's standing as a family suburb. For a house project, though, the binding controls are still the permitted-development limits and whatever conservation designation covers your road. We check both before drawing.
Often, yes. The bigger semis and detached houses along Mount Park Road and Castlebar Road have the plot width and the separation for a two-storey side or rear extension, subject to Ealing's design and neighbour-amenity policies. We design inside those limits and draw the scheme for planning and for Building Control.
Ealing Green, Montpelier, Pitshanger and Mount Park all carry conservation designations inside W5, and each controls materials, bay windows and roofscape. We check the exact address, because that check is what decides between a full application with heritage justification and a certificate of lawfulness.
The Land Registry recorded 569 W5 sales in 2025 at a median of £625,000, and against a number like that our drawing fee is a modest share of a project on the substantial Edwardian and Victorian villas filling this postcode. Ealing bills its own fee separately — £548 on the householder route, £610 if the scheme needs a full application. We price the drawings once and do not revisit it, and nobody in this district pays for the site visit.
A W5 job at Ealing, Ealing Broadway, Pitshanger or Montpelier takes three weeks, four at the outside, from the day we are instructed to the day it is lodged. Survey in the first week, then a fortnight of drawings and whatever you want changed about them, and then validation starts Ealing's statutory eight weeks on a householder decision. Anything the case officer asks afterwards is ours to answer.
W5 is Ealing almost in its entirety — 98.6% of the district's 2025 sales fell inside the borough — so Ealing Council decides all but a handful of applications from here. Article 4 cover is in force. Ealing Green, Montpelier, Pitshanger and Mount Park are the designated areas within W5, and inside their boundaries nothing proceeds without a full application and heritage justification. The route for a specific address gets confirmed before we quote.
Almost always. Openings cut, beams installed, a loft floor formed, foundations disturbed: all of it falls under the Building Regulations, and the parts engaged are A for structure, B for escape, L for insulation. Sign-off comes either from Ealing's building control service or from an approved inspector. W5 being mostly terraces and semis, party wall notice usually precedes the steelwork. One thing rarely needed here is a Flood Risk Assessment — a single postcode unit in the whole district falls inside Flood Zone 3. The Complete package covers the two that do apply.
In value terms, yes, though the measurable risk sits somewhere else entirely. What costs money later is an unapproved or non-compliant scheme, and drawings the council has validated, plus a clean regulations record, are the defence against it. On flooding, W5 is about as unencumbered as London gets: of 1,007 postcode units in the district, 0.2% touch Flood Zone 2 and exactly one unit touches Zone 3, so a Flood Risk Assessment is seldom engaged here at all.
If your site sits close to the edge of the borough, it is worth checking the authority next door. Browse everything we do in NW10, W3, W4, W7 and W13.
Pick a slot that suits you. No obligation and no sales pressure, just straight answers on your planning route.
The W5 districts we draw in, the stock that dominates each of them, and who validates a submission there. Fees quoted are 2026 statutory England application charges, payable to the council and unrelated to the cost of a survey.
| Postcode | Area | Dominant stock | What it means for a measured building survey |
|---|---|---|---|
| W5 | Ealing | Edwardian villas, Victorian terraces | W5 is effectively all Ealing, so the council handles the work and its officers read the address against the W5 conservation-area mapping. |
| W5 | Ealing Broadway | Edwardian villas, Victorian terraces | Ealing Broadway lies inside W5, and proposals arising from a survey there are determined by Ealing Council. |
| W5 | Pitshanger | Edwardian villas | Pitshanger is W5 as well, and its applications go the same way: Ealing Council decides them. |
| W3 | Acton | Victorian and Edwardian terraces | Adjoining district to W5. Surveying needs no consent here either — Ealing has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| W7 | Hanwell | Edwardian villas, 1930s semi-detached | Adjoining district to W5. Surveying needs no consent here either — Ealing has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| W13 | West Ealing | Edwardian terraces | Adjoining district to W5. Surveying needs no consent here either — Ealing has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
Within a few W5 streets the pitch changes, the wall construction changes and the plot depth changes, and each of those limits what a survey can support at that particular address.
Conservation areas covering W5 (Ealing): Ealing Council runs 30, and Hanwell, Ealing Broadway, Pitshanger are the ones W5 (Ealing) owners meet most. A measured building survey inside a W5 (Ealing) conservation area loses permitted development, so the W5 (Ealing) submission is a householder application at £548 decided in 8 weeks — not a £249 prior approval decided in 6 weeks. In Pitshanger a measured building survey is judged on the street elevation first.
What Article 4 removes near W5 (Ealing): the borough's Article 4 cover for HMOs is drawn over named streets in Acton, Ealing and Southall. Whether a W5 address sits inside the mapped area gets checked before anything is priced, since Ealing has drawn that boundary road by road and not over the district wholesale.
What W5 (Ealing) is built from: Victorian and Edwardian villas through central Ealing, inter-war semis on the outer streets, mansion blocks along the main roads. Two things often listed alongside W5 are not actually in it — Bedford Park, the Arts and Crafts garden suburb, is W4 out on the Chiswick edge, and the 1930s semis of Northolt and Hanwell are UB5 and W7. What the house is, not what the postcode is, decides the route here — and it is the first thing an Ealing case officer reads. The householder application itself is £548, paid to the council directly, with eight weeks running from validation to decision.
Sources for this W5 measured building survey 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.
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