Air conditioning in Islington

Islington has 42 conservation areas, and the council's design page puts them at around half of the borough. Barnsbury, Canonbury, Highbury New Park and Clerkenwell Green are among them, and many squares and terraces are also listed. A listed house always needs listed building consent for an outdoor unit or for cutting through historic walls, and permitted development does not apply to it. In a conservation area, an outdoor unit cannot face the street without permission. The back of the house, often a lower ground floor area or a rear closet wing roof, is the usual place to look.

The Greater London Authority's study of properties vulnerable to heat names Islington among the central boroughs with higher heat risk for homes, partly because so many people live in flats. Top floor flats in converted terraces and flats in 1960s and 1970s blocks with large windows are the common problem rooms. Islington is also covered by the high risk overheating postcodes in Approved Document O, which applies to new homes, including N1, N5 and N7.

Most Islington flats are leasehold, with a freeholder who may be another flat owner, a company or the council. The lease sets out what alterations need consent. For a planning application, the council will want drawings showing the unit position, pipe route and any screening, plus a noise assessment. For a listed house, it will also want a heritage statement explaining how the work affects the building. Keeping the unit small, low and out of sight helps every one of those.

Islington also has many purpose built blocks, from 1930s mansion flats to post war council estates and newer developments around Archway, Holloway and the City Road basin. Council owned blocks have their own rules for leaseholders and tenants, and the council as freeholder will need to approve any external unit. In private blocks, the managing agent and the lease decide. In all of them, a single flat has no permitted development right of its own, so planning is usually needed too.

If you are a council leaseholder, contact the council's leasehold team before getting quotes, because it will set out what it needs to see.