Air conditioning in Wembley

Brent's own Local Plan describes the split better than we could. It says the north of the area is predominantly Metroland suburban residential, comprising the 1920s and 1930s detached and semi detached houses of the Barn Hill conservation area and the later Chalkhill estate, while the area east of Empire Way is very different: historically industrial land around the stadium, now a high density mixed use neighbourhood of contemporary tall buildings.

Those two descriptions are about a mile apart and they need opposite advice. Almost everything that decides an air conditioning install here follows from which of the two you are in.

Wembley is designated as an Opportunity Area in the London Plan and as Brent's largest Growth Area. The council's target is over 15,000 new homes, delivered principally at Wembley Park, and the policy explicitly endorses tall buildings inside the Growth Area while restricting them outside it.

That matters for a practical reason. A high proportion of the homes in central Wembley are recent, purpose built, professionally managed and constructed with their own ventilation and cooling strategies already designed in. Retrofitting a split system into a building like that is frequently not permitted, and where it is, the position is dictated by the building rather than chosen.

In Preston, Tokyngton, Barnhill and the streets around Barn Hill, Wembley is the same interwar suburb as the rest of our patch: a side or rear elevation for the condenser, a pipe run inside three metres, a day's work.

The catch is Barn Hill itself. It is a 1920s mock Tudor development designed and built from 1926 on the back of the British Empire Exhibition, it is a conservation area, and every one of Brent's residential conservation areas is covered by an Article 4 direction. Where one applies, permission is needed for work that would otherwise be automatic. Barn Hill sits directly north of Wembley Park station, so it is easy to be in it without realising.

Lawns Court, on The Avenue between Preston and Wembley Park, is the other local designation. It is six blocks of 1930s Moderne flats, and Brent notes it has no Article 4 direction precisely because apartments do not benefit from permitted development rights in the first place.

Brent publishes an interactive policies map and asks residents to use it to check conservation area status: enter the address, click the pin, and it shows the relevant policies. That is the quickest way to settle the question before anyone visits.

Worth noting that two conservation areas often assumed to be Wembley, Sudbury Court and Northwick Circle, are actually in Kenton ward rather than Wembley. If you are between the two, the map will tell you which you are in.