Ealing: air conditioning planning permission

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 cooling-only air conditioning unit does not get that route and needs a full planning application in Ealing whatever the property, because on its own it only cools.

Picking a system in Ealing therefore decides your planning path as much as your comfort. A unit that heats and cools opens up the permitted-development route on a house; one that only cools never does. Roughly 13% of Ealing's EPC-certified homes fall inside a conservation area, concentrated in areas like Acton Green, Acton Town Centre, Bedford Park - most addresses are outside one, but the boundary check is worth doing before committing to a wall-mounted unit.

Flats are the sharpest exception here as everywhere in England: the permitted-development right for an outdoor unit sits with the house, not the flat, so a Ealing flat will usually need both freeholder or managing-agent consent and planning permission.

Around 13.2% of Ealing's properties sit inside a conservation area, among them Acton Green, Acton Town Centre and Bedford Park - a middling figure nationally, so the permitted-development position varies more by exact location here than in an area with a clear-cut high or low coverage figure.

Of the 79 planning applications mentioning air conditioning or other cooling plant that Ealing has decided - every development type, of which 36 were householder applications - 91.1% were approved.

Put as counts: 72 went through, 7 did not.

Householder applications alone tell a slightly different story, and they are the ones that resemble your case: 91.7% of the 36 were approved.

These are applications whose own description names cooling equipment. An application that installed the same kit but described it as external plant is not in the Ealing count.

A different question, kept separate on purpose: 90.2% of the 51 applications mentioning an air-source heat pump that Ealing has decided were approved. Air-source usually means a heating scheme, not a cooling one, and an application can sit in both sets, so the two figures are never summed or averaged.

What actually gets refused, and what councils attach when they approve, is a national picture rather than a local one at the volume of officer reasoning currently published. We set both out with their sample sizes: why cooling applications get refused and the conditions councils attach.

You can also compare what each council decides, where enough decisions exist to publish a figure.

Ambient daytime noise across the Ealing property types we profile averages around 51 dB, and that background level matters as much as the machine's own rating: the same unit that vanishes against a main road can be the loudest thing in a quiet back garden.

Siting is the lever. Keeping the outdoor unit away from a neighbour's window and back from the boundary is what most often turns a marginal case into an approved one.

None of this should put you off. Councils across Ealing approve outdoor units for homes exactly like this all the time. Roughly 13.2% of properties sit inside a conservation area, and it is still a genuine step rather than a rubber stamp. Being near a listed building - around 1% of homes here sit within 30 metres of one is not the same as being listed yourself, and public records can raise a conservation-area flag without resolving it. This stays indicative, not legal advice: confirm with your Local Planning Authority before you install.