Hammersmith and Fulham: cooling planning decisions

There are 78 determined applications on Hammersmith and Fulham's record whose description names a condenser, air conditioning or similar plant, of which 75 were approved and 3 refused.

Hammersmith and Fulham's record holds 91 more that never reached a determination, whether because they remain live or because the applicant pulled them. Everything below excludes them, so the rate describes determined cases only.

That is 96.2% approved across 78 decisions covering every development type, 27 of them householder applications. Approval is clearly the norm, with enough refusals in the record that the detail of a submission still carries weight.

The scope matters as much as the number. Commercial and mixed-use plant makes up a large share of any council's cooling caseload, so an all-development rate is a weaker guide to a domestic application than its size suggests.

Householder applications alone: 27 of 27 approved, 100%. Few councils have decided enough domestic cooling applications for this figure to be worth publishing, and Hammersmith and Fulham is one that has.

One caveat that applies throughout: the deep historical backfill has not yet covered Hammersmith and Fulham, which makes 78 a floor, not a total. The rate is drawn from what we hold, a recent slice rather than the full history.

The air-to-air heat pump, which heats as well as cools and is the only equipment that can be permitted development on a house, appears in none of Hammersmith and Fulham's decided applications by name. Nationally the count is similarly close to zero: this is a category planning departments have barely met.

Heat-pump applications meet slightly more resistance in Hammersmith and Fulham than cooling plant does: 92.9% of 42 decisions on applications mentioning an air-source heat pump were approvals.

These two figures are never added, averaged or read as one. Most air-source schemes heat rather than cool, and an application mentioning both sits in both counts.

The distinction is the whole point: an air-to-air heat pump, which heats as well as cools, can be permitted development on a house, and a cooling-only unit cannot.

Since 2025-05-29, England's permitted-development rules let a house fit an air-to-air heat pump, which heats as well as cools, without a planning application in many cases, within set size, siting and noise limits. A unit that only cools has no equivalent route and needs a full application whatever the property.

That is why the decisions above matter more than they would have before the change. Every cooling-only installation now crosses a planning officer's desk, so the council's posture is not background information, it is the decision.

Flats are the sharpest exception, here as everywhere in England: the permitted-development right for an outdoor unit belongs to the house rather than to a flat within it, so a flat will usually need freeholder or managing-agent consent as well as planning permission.

What those refusals were FOR is a national question at the volume of officer reasoning currently published, not a council-level one, and we do not pretend otherwise. Both findings are set out with their sample sizes: why cooling applications get refused and the conditions councils attach to an approval.

Every council we can publish a figure for is listed on the council index.

Applications are identified from their own description, so every count on these pages means applications mentioning cooling equipment, not every cooling installation in the area. An application that fitted the same kit but described it as external plant is not in these figures, which makes them a floor on activity rather than a census.

Each application is assigned to Hammersmith and Fulham through the postcode on the application itself. Of the 169 applications recorded for this authority, 100% carry a location we could resolve; nationally 1682 of 18427 applications could not be tied to a district at all and sit outside every figure on this site rather than being quietly assigned somewhere.

What this page cannot tell you is what will happen at your address. It has no view of your elevation, your neighbours' windows, whether your home sits in a conservation area, or whether it is a listed building - and a neighbour's approval settles none of those. This is indicative guidance drawn from public planning records, not legal advice: confirm the final position with your Local Planning Authority before you install.