Planning permission approval rates sound like a simple statistic — until you realise they mean almost nothing for your specific project. Whether your application sails through or gets refused in Greenwich depends on a layered combination of factors that vary street by street, property by property. WhatCanIBuild exists precisely because that complexity is genuinely hard to unpick on your own.
The short version
- Approval odds in Greenwich aren't uniform — your street, property type, and project all pull in different directions
- Greenwich has constraints that most homeowners don't know apply to their address until it's too late
Greenwich isn't one planning environment — it's many
Greenwich spans SE2, SE3, SE7, SE9, SE10, and SE18. That's a wide range of property types, ages, and planning histories. A Victorian terrace in Blackheath sits in a completely different planning context to a post-war semi in Eltham — even if both are technically in the same borough.
Conservation areas, Article 4 directions, listed building status, flood zones — these aren't evenly distributed across Greenwich. They cluster in certain streets and postcodes. Most homeowners don't realise their property is affected by one or more of these constraints until their application runs into trouble. And knowing that a constraint exists is very different from knowing what it actually means for your specific project.
The UNESCO buffer zone changes things for some properties
Greenwich is home to the Maritime Greenwich UNESCO World Heritage Site — and there's a buffer zone around it that introduces an additional layer of planning scrutiny. Properties within or near that zone can face requirements and restrictions that don't apply elsewhere in the borough.
Here's the thing: the edges of that zone aren't always obvious from an address. A few streets in either direction can make a significant difference to how your application is assessed and how likely it is to be approved.
Worth knowing
Being outside the World Heritage Site boundary doesn't automatically mean you're outside the buffer zone — and the buffer zone itself carries its own planning implications.
What's happened on your street matters more than you think
Greenwich Council decisions aren't made in a vacuum. What's been approved — and refused — nearby creates a de facto pattern that influences how similar applications get treated. Two identical extensions on the same road can have very different outcomes depending on which side of a conservation area boundary they fall, whether a neighbour's objection carries weight, or whether a previous application set a precedent.
Most homeowners start their planning journey without any visibility into that local decision history. They don't know whether similar projects on their street got permission, what conditions were attached, or what reasons previous refusals cited. That's exactly the kind of information that shapes whether your application is likely to succeed — and it's exactly what WhatCanIBuild surfaces for your specific property.
The 8-week clock doesn't tell you much
Greenwich typically takes around 8 weeks to decide householder applications, and the fee for a standard householder application is £258. Those are the easy numbers. What they don't tell you is how your application will land given your property's specific combination of constraints, your project type, and the local approval patterns in your area.
Going in without that picture means you're spending time, money, and goodwill on an application that might have a straightforward fix — or might need a completely different approach.
Before you submit anything, WhatCanIBuild gives you a property-level read on your approval odds: what's been approved and refused nearby, which constraints apply to your address, and how your specific project type performs in your area. Not the borough average — your property.
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