Chiswick Road Residents Seek to Block Dukes Gate Plan

Proposal to add extra floor to office block being converted into flats

The Dukes Gate development already overlooks neighbouring gardens

September 4, 2024

Residents of Chiswick Road are seeking to prevent the increase in height of a former office block which they say would further compromise their privacy.

Permission was given by Hounslow Council planners for the Dukes Gate building on Acton Lane close to Chiswick Park station to be converted into 29 self-contained flats earlier this year.

Now the developer, Midshires Estates Limited, has revealed plans to include an extra ten flats by building an additional storey and has made a submission (PAC/2024/1338) to the council planning team asking if prior approval is needed or if it can be carried out under Permitted Development Rights. The building would be the equivalent of six storeys high were permission to be given and none of the new units would be classed as affordable.

Dukes Gate is an unlisted detached building to the west of Acton Lane which includes an underground/lower ground floor car park providing 47 spaces, together with an internal courtyard which has an additional eight car parking spaces at street level.

It included six commercial office units, four of which were occupied at the time of the earlier application, but the building is now understood to have been completely vacated.

Residents believe an extra floor would totally compromise their right to privacy

The block is at the rear of two storey residential terraced properties in Chiswick Road which it already partly overlooks many despite a high retaining wall at the rear of the gardens. The road is at the lower end of the slope leading up Acton Lane which means that the Dukes Gate building is already 5 metres above the houses.

Over twenty residents have submitted objections to the latest application and have gained the support from the three local ward councillors who agree that the proposal should not proceed.

Opponents of the plan say they have commissioned professional advisors who have submitted objection reports on our behalf that contends the proposal is not compliant with the council’s own Design Codes and Guidelines. Theses issues have been reported to the council’s Design Review Panel.

A letter written to the borough planning team by Oliver Wheeler, a planning specialist at Savills, on behalf of residents, states, “As a result of Dukes Gate having windows facing due south and due west and due to the relationship of the proposals to the existing boundary wall there is almost no part of the existing adjoining and neighbouring gardens that are not directly overlooked or locations where residents will be able to have privacy within their gardens. Locations such as adjacent to the back of each dwelling along Chiswick Road, where dwellings have living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms which are not currently overlooked, will all be significantly overlooked by the development proposals.

“Overlooking from Dukes Gate is exacerbated by virtue of the significant height of Dukes Gate in the context of its adjacent predominately two storey dwellings. As the ground level of Dukes Gate is located above the 5m high retaining wall to the rear gardens of dwellings along Chiswick Road the proposals at Dukes Gate read as a five-storey building with a pitched roof above and the resulting overall massing is similar to that of a six storey building. The resulting sense of enclosure created from the sheer contrast to the two local buildings is considered to create a significant and unacceptable impact on residential amenity.”

Although the Dukes Gate building is not listed, nearby Chiswick Park Station is and residents say that the taller building will have a negative impact on its setting as well as that of the neighbouring Gunnersbury Triangle Nature Reserve.

Applying under permitted development rules means that potentially the scheme could be approved without it being put to the borough planning committee or councillors being able to vote on it. Some of the site-specific issues, that residents have raised concerns about may not be considered for this type of application as such applications have very restricted criteria for assessment. The residents opposing the scheme believe there is a broader point of principle involved given that such a highly impactful scheme could be given the go ahead with such a limited amount of scrutiny.