City/Town Name: Wembley

Borough Name: Brent

City Information

Wembley is a busy suburb in north west London, best known for Wembley Stadium and the wider Wembley Park regeneration area. The area sits about eight miles north west of central London and has very strong transport links, with three local stations and quick access to the North Circular Road. This makes Wembley popular with families who want more space and with people who work in the city but prefer a suburban street.

Housing in Wembley is quite mixed. Many roads are lined with traditional semi detached houses from the nineteen thirties, while other parts of the area have post war terraces, maisonettes and low rise blocks. In recent years there has also been a large number of new build flats around Wembley Park, aimed at young professionals and renters. All of this creates strong demand for extra rooms, and many homeowners now look to their lofts as the best way to add bedrooms or a home office without leaving Wembley.

Planning Notes

Wembley is covered by Brent Council, and the relevant planning service is the Planning and Building Control team at Brent Civic Centre on Engineers Way. For loft conversions the council follows national permitted development rules rather than publishing a separate local volume limit. Brent’s guidance sends homeowners to the national planning portal and the General Permitted Development Order to check what they can build without a full planning application.

Under national permitted development rights many rear roof dormer loft conversions in Brent can be carried out without full planning permission, as long as they stay within the national volume limits, keep to the existing roof slope on the street side, and use suitable materials. Terraced houses are normally limited to about forty cubic metres of added roof space, while semi detached and detached houses can have about fifty cubic metres, measured over the whole roof. Any dormer that projects above the existing ridge line, includes a large front dormer facing the highway, or is built on a flat roof will usually need a full planning application rather than relying on permitted development.

Brent also has twenty two conservation areas and is consulting on updated Article 4 Directions to protect the character of these streets, which can remove some permitted development rights for changes to roofs, windows and other details. If a home in Wembley sits inside a conservation area, the owner should not assume that a standard loft conversion will be permitted development. They must check the council’s conservation area and Article 4 maps, and often will need to apply for planning permission with a design that respects the original appearance of the house and the wider street.

Article Notes

Brent Council uses Article 4 Directions for two main purposes. One is to control changes of use to small houses in multiple occupation. The other is to protect the character of conservation areas by bringing certain external changes under planning control. The borough wide Article 4 Direction that started in November twenty twenty two removes the automatic right to change many houses from a normal dwelling to a small shared HMO without planning permission, but it does not directly remove permitted development rights for building a loft in a typical family home. For loft work in Wembley the more important issue is whether the property lies inside a designated conservation area with its own Article 4 rules. In those streets the council can require planning applications for matters that would normally be permitted development, such as roof coverings, front elevation rooflights or changes to original features. Every project should begin with a check of Brent’s online conservation area and Article 4 maps and, if needed, a quick discussion with the planning duty officer. This avoids surprises later and helps the homeowner understand where permitted development stops and full planning permission starts for their particular loft conversion in Wembley.

Types of Houses

Housing in Wembley is mainly made up of nineteen thirties semi detached houses and similar interwar homes, many with generous roof space and hipped roofs. These houses are common on quiet residential roads away from the stadium, and they lend themselves well to hip to gable and rear dormer loft conversions that create proper double bedrooms with en suites. There are also long rows of post war terraces and low rise blocks nearer to the main roads, where roof shapes and party wall conditions need more careful checking before a loft design is fixed. Closer to Wembley Park and the stadium the picture changes. Here the focus is on newer purpose built flats and tall mixed use blocks that have gone up as part of Brent’s largest growth area. Most of these newer buildings have communal roofs and shared structure, so loft conversions in the usual sense are not practical. In this part of Wembley extra space is more often found by reworking internal layouts instead, while the classic loft conversion market is strongest in the older streets of semi detached and terraced houses around Sudbury, North Wembley and the roads off Harrow Road.