Tower Hamlets: 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 Tower Hamlets whatever the property, because on its own it only cools.

In Tower Hamlets, the system you choose is a planning decision as much as a comfort one. An air-to-air heat pump on a house qualifies for permitted development because it does both jobs; a unit that only cools is excluded from that route entirely. Roughly 21% of Tower Hamlets's EPC-certified homes fall inside a conservation area, concentrated in areas like Tower Hamlets Cemetery, Swaton Road, Carlton Square - 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 Tower Hamlets flat will usually need both freeholder or managing-agent consent and planning permission.

Tower Hamlets lands close to the national middle on conservation coverage - about 20.6% of properties, including parts of Tower Hamlets Cemetery, Swaton Road and Carlton Square. With no clear-cut high or low figure to lean on, the permitted-development answer for an outdoor unit here turns more on your exact location than the borough-wide average.

Nothing has yet been decided among the cooling applications Tower Hamlets holds. We publish approval rates from determined cases only, so there is no figure here to give you.

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 Tower Hamlets property types we profile averages around 55 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 Tower Hamlets approve outdoor units for homes exactly like this all the time. Roughly 20.6% 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 6.9% 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.