How likely is my planning application to get approved in Wandsworth?

Planning permission in Wandsworth sounds simple until you start digging. The borough spans SW11 to SW18, covers wildly different neighbourhoods, and carries a web of local constraints that can make two almost-identical projects on the same road land very differently. If you're trying to work out your odds, WhatCanIBuild can show you what's actually been approved and refused near your address — because the borough-level picture only tells you so much.

The borough average doesn't tell you much

Wandsworth approves a reasonable proportion of planning applications — but that headline number masks enormous variation underneath it. A rear extension in Tooting isn't the same planning conversation as a loft conversion in Battersea. A side return in Balham isn't assessed the same way as one in a Putney conservation area. Most homeowners anchor on the borough-wide approval rate and assume it applies to them. It often doesn't.

What actually matters is what's been decided on your street, for your project type, under the specific constraints that apply to your property — not what happened across thousands of unrelated applications somewhere else in the borough.

Conservation areas and Article 4 directions — do you know if they apply to you?

Wandsworth has 46 conservation areas. That's not a footnote — it's a significant chunk of the borough where the rules around what you can change, and how, are considerably tighter. Windows, doors, roofing materials, chimneys, boundary treatments — all of these can fall under restrictions that wouldn't apply to an identical house three streets away.

Then there are Article 4 directions. These remove permitted development rights that most homeowners assume they have. Many properties in Wandsworth's conservation areas sit under Article 4 directions and the owners have no idea. If yours does, projects you thought didn't need permission almost certainly do.

And then there are listed buildings — a category that creates an entirely different layer of complexity on top of everything else.

The question isn't just "will it get approved" — it's "what does approved even look like here"

Even when applications succeed in Wandsworth, conditions are common. Conditions about materials, about hours of construction, about what can and can't be changed later. An approval with onerous conditions isn't always the win it looks like on paper.

The best way to understand your real approval odds — not the borough average, but what's genuinely likely for your specific project at your specific address — is to look at the actual decision history near you. That means knowing what similar projects on nearby streets got, why some were refused, and how your property's combination of constraints stacks up against those precedents.

WhatCanIBuild pulls that picture together for your address: what's been approved and refused nearby, what the patterns look like for your project type, and what your specific constraints actually mean for your chances. It's the kind of clarity that's hard to piece together yourself — and the kind that makes the difference between a confident application and an expensive guess.

Wandsworth applications typically take around 8 weeks to decide and cost £258 to submit. That's time and money you'd rather spend knowing your odds going in.

WhatCanIBuild gives you that picture before you commit to anything.