Westminster council has launched a squad of “basement nuisance busters” to deal with problems caused by construction work under luxury London homes.
The new team is being funded by a levy on residents looking to extend their homes below ground.
The average charge for a domestic property will be £8,000 with bills of up to £30,000 for commercial residential schemes.
The noise, dust and traffic impacts of basement development have had a major effect on local residents in central London.
The levy is being drawn-up as part of the council’s new Code of Construction Practice which will also be rolled out over the coming months to cover larger developments in the city.
Cllr Robert Davis, Westminster City Council Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for the Built Environment, said: “We are sticking up for local residents, many of whom have found the explosion of basement development in recent years hellish. It is right that those who want to build basements should contribute to this new service, which will work to help mitigate the negative impacts. Westminster City Council supports the right kind of growth and is not against all basement development, but they must be carried out in a way that is considerate to local residents and the environment.”
Over the last five years Westminster City Council has received on average 150 applications each year and has seen a trend towards more ‘iceberg’ basements where homeowners dig down two or more storeys.
New rules include planning controls limiting basements to a single storey and no more than 50% of total garden land.
The new basement squad will:
- take a degree of oversight and control, for example making sites coordinate their deliveries and reduce the cumulative impact on residents
- check that developers are keeping neighbours informed for instance via newsletters or site meetings
- enforce stricter working hours so as to avoid noisy works at inconvenient times such as Saturday mornings
- provide a point of contact for residents with complaints – with the power to enforce against overly noisy sites under statutory powers
- monitor the level and impacts of traffic to sites
- also police development sites of over 10 residential units, or over 1000m2 commercial floorspace
The levy on a residential basement scheme will cost around £8,000 on average with the largest developments charged around £30,000.
The new powers will only apply to basements which gained planning permission from August 2016 onward, and other major development schemes from September.
