Air conditioning in Stanmore
The other half of the home patch, and the more protected one. Four conservation areas, every one of them under an Article 4 direction.
Air conditioning installation across London. Based in Harrow and Stanmore.
Air conditioning in Stanmore
Stanmore is where our day starts, so it is a short run and the survey and install usually sit close together. It also needs more care than most places. Stanmore has four conservation areas, Little Common, Stanmore Hill, Old Church Lane and Kerry Avenue, and all four carry Article 4 directions that remove permitted development rights on elevations fronting a highway, waterway or open space. Much of the north is Green Belt and sits within the Harrow Weald Ridge Area of Special Character. The practical answer in nearly every case is that the outdoor unit goes to the rear, out of sight of the street, which is what Harrow Council's own appraisals ask for. Outside the designated areas, Stanmore is a mix of larger detached houses, interwar semis and postwar flats along the main roads, and those are straightforward.
Wall mounted systems start from £1,995 fully installed, and the price does not change with the postcode.
Planning authority
London Borough of Harrow
Postcode district
HA7
Conservation areas
Four, all with Article 4
Also covers
Green Belt and Area of Special Character
The four conservation areas
Harrow groups its Stanmore and Edgware conservation areas together, six in total. These are the four the council names as Stanmore. Every one carries an Article 4 direction.
| Conservation area | Designated | Article 4 direction |
|---|---|---|
| Little Common | 1970, extended 1987, 2002 and 2013 | Yes |
| Stanmore Hill | 1975, extended 1980, 1991 and 2002 | Yes |
| Old Church Lane | 1975, extended to 2013 | Yes |
| Kerry Avenue | 1980, amended 1986, 1991 and 1999 | Yes |
Published by the London Borough of Harrow. The other two in the group, Edgware High Street and Canons Park Estate, the council labels as Edgware.
Harrow's appraisals name air conditioning directly
The adopted Kerry Avenue appraisal carries a line item headed Air Conditioning Units, and it says they can be very visually obtrusive, particularly where they are poorly sited and visible from the street scene. The council's stated approach to externally mounted equipment is that it should be carefully sited and integrated so it is as concealed and unobtrusive as possible, which will usually mean installing where it is not visible from the street. That is the council's own wording, and it is how we design here.
What the Article 4 directions actually cover
The Stanmore directions are mostly of the Article 4(2) kind, which only bites on elevations fronting a highway, waterway or open space. On Little Common and Stanmore Hill the 2003 directions remove permitted development for things like alterations to a dwellinghouse, roof alterations, porches, hard surfacing, satellite antennae, boundary treatments and exterior painting, in each case where the work fronts one of those.
More recently, in 2023, further directions on Little Common and Stanmore Hill withdrew permitted development for the installation, alteration or replacement of a chimney, flue or soil and vent pipe on those same street facing elevations. That is a different provision from the one covering heat pumps, so it does not directly govern an air conditioning outdoor unit. What it tells you is that this is a council actively removing rights for external building services where they can be seen from the road, and it is a fair signal of how a visible condenser position would be received.
Both directions list the affected properties by street and number rather than applying to the whole area, so whether one applies to you is a question about your specific address, not your road.
Kerry Avenue is a special case
Kerry Avenue is not the mock Tudor you might expect. It is an estate of interwar International and Modern Movement houses, and Harrow describes it as the earliest domestic group in west London to adopt Modern Movement principles. The first houses, numbers 1 to 6, were designed by Gerald Lacoste.
The whole estate exists because the Metropolitan Railway extended to Stanmore, and the station, opened on 10 December 1932 and designed by the railway's own architect C W Clark, is locally listed and sits at the axis of the layout. It is on the Jubilee line today.
Flat roofs and clean rendered elevations leave a condenser nowhere to hide, and the 1999 Article 4(2) direction here covers alterations, porches, hard surfacing, boundary treatments and exterior painting where they front a highway or open space. On these houses the position needs settling before anything else.
What this means street by street
In one of the four conservation areas
The outdoor unit goes to the rear, out of sight of the street. Check whether your specific address is named in the relevant Article 4 schedule, because they list properties individually. We do that check before quoting.
In the Green Belt or on the ridge
Little Common, Stanmore Hill and the edge of Kerry Avenue sit in Green Belt and within the Harrow Weald Ridge Area of Special Character. Neither stops an ordinary domestic installation, and both mean visible external changes get looked at more closely.
In a larger detached house
Stanmore has more detached housing than most of the borough, at roughly a quarter of households, much of it on land that was once part of the Bentley Priory and Stanmore Hall estates. Bigger plots often mean a longer pipe run to a discreet condenser position, and anything past the three metres included is quoted per metre upfront.
In a postwar block on Uxbridge Road or London Road
Around a third of Stanmore ward's households are in purpose built flats, many of them in postwar ribbons along the main roads. Freeholder consent comes first, and above the first floor a condensate pump is likely and is priced on the quote.
One thing people get wrong about Stanmore
It is often described as classic 1930s semi country. It partly is, but Stanmore ward itself is not: at the 2021 Census it was about 26 percent detached, 21 percent semi detached and 36 percent purpose built flats. The solid semi belt is in the wards around it, Centenary at roughly 60 percent semi detached and Belmont at roughly 70 percent.
That matters because the semi and the detached house on a bigger plot are different jobs, and the flat is a different job again. It is worth telling us which you have rather than which Stanmore is assumed to be.
Your planning authority is London Borough of Harrow
They decide any application for your address, and they publish the conservation area maps you would need to check it. We do not submit applications on your behalf, but we will tell you at the survey if one is likely and give you the unit dimensions and position to put on the form.
London Borough of Harrow conservation areasWhat we fit most in Stanmore
Every price is fully installed and includes the unit, the installation, the electrical work and VAT.
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