England Has a Height Complex. I’ve Spent A Decade Watching It Cost People Homes.

Chris Wood, Director & Chartered Architectural Technologist, JSA Architects

I know how the conversation goes before it happens.

The scheme goes in. We’ve done our homework — the design is considered, the planning argument is strong, the context has been read properly. Then the pre-app feedback comes back, or the officer’s report, or the neighbour’s objection letter.

And there it is. The word.

Height.

Not: “this specific building, on this specific site, is too tall for this specific and articulable reason.” Just — height. A generalised unease. An instinctive resistance, dressed up in the language of character and context and sensitivity to surroundings.

The Three Words That Kill More Schemes Than Almost Anything Else

“In keeping with.”

I’ve seen those three words used to justify refusals on schemes that were genuinely well-designed, on sites that could have delivered real housing, by planning officers and committees who were applying them not as a considered planning judgment but as a default. A way of saying “we’re not sure about this” that sounds like policy.

Here is what “in keeping with the surrounding area” means, taken to its actual logical conclusion: every generation must build exactly like the previous one. Because the previous generation built to match theirs. Which matched the one before. Back to whenever the area was first developed.

The Victorian terraces we now protect as the defining character of their streets were not built to match anything. The Georgians weren’t required to match the streets that came before them either. The buildings we currently use as the benchmark for what new development should defer to were, in many cases, the most imposing, most out-of-scale, most emphatically not-in-keeping things anyone had ever proposed building on that street.

We are preserving the legacy of people who would have had very little patience for the rules we’re using to do it.

I’m Not Arguing That Context Doesn’t Matter

I am not saying height restrictions are always wrong. I am not suggesting every site should go as tall as possible. I’ve worked on plenty of schemes where height was genuinely inappropriate — where the site conditions, the neighbours, the setting, the view made a strong, specific case for keeping the scale down — and we made that argument ourselves.

Context matters. To good architecture, not just to planning. There are real reasons to limit height on certain sites, and I’d be the first to acknowledge them.

What I’m describing is something different: the cultural default. The instinct to treat height as inherently suspicious, not because of what the specific site demands but because of a generalised discomfort with things being taller than what’s already there.

Here’s something that bothers me about how that plays out in practice. A building that sprawls across a site occupies more land, blocks more daylight at ground level, and puts more built form at human scale than a narrower building of the same floor area going up two more storeys. But the sprawling scheme tends to sail through. The taller one gets scrutinised.

The Committee Problem

I have genuine respect for planning officers. They’re applying policy, and while I disagree with their conclusions often enough, the process is at least one of evidence and argument.

Planning committees are different. They’re political in the most direct sense of the word.

The volume of objections a scheme receives — not the quality of those objections, just the number — can determine whether it goes to committee rather than being decided by officers. And in committee, the people who showed up to object carry a weight that’s disproportionate to what they represent.

Height attracts objections because it’s visible. You can stand in your garden and point at where the new building will be. You can photograph it from the street. You can’t do any of that with arguments about density or land efficiency or housing need. So height objections pile up. Pile-ups trigger committees. And committees make decisions that prioritise the discomfort of the people in the room over the housing needs of the people who aren’t there — because they don’t live in the area yet.

This is the part that I find genuinely difficult. The people who would benefit from the housing that doesn’t get built have no seat at the planning table. The people who object to it do. And height, more than almost anything else, is where that imbalance shows up.

I’m not asking for the abolition of height policy. I’m asking for something more straightforward: assess the site on its actual conditions.

Does the building create genuine, material harm to its neighbours? Does it block a view that has been identified and protected for real civic reasons — not just someone’s preference? Does it conflict with the established character of the immediate area in a way that goes beyond the fact that it’s taller than what’s already there?

If yes to any of those: there’s a legitimate planning argument. Let’s have it. Redesign if needed, negotiate where the evidence supports it, push back where it doesn’t.

If no: build the building. Build it well. Let it earn its place not by being short enough to avoid scrutiny, but by being good enough to deserve it.

Our Work Across The Midlands

The Homes That Don’t Exist

The houses Britain isn’t building right now aren’t failing to exist because of bad design. They’re failing to exist because the system treats height as a problem to be managed rather than a tool to be used — and because we’ve collectively arrived, without quite deciding to, at a position where the discomfort of change matters more than the cost of stasis.

That cost isn’t abstract. It’s the families on waiting lists. It’s the developers watching schemes get ground down to something that barely stacks up. It’s the brownfield sites in Midlands towns that could deliver fifty homes at four storeys and currently deliver zero at two — because nobody wanted to have the height conversation.

I’ve been having that conversation for twenty years. I’m not tired of it.

But I would like it to go somewhere.

Running into height objections?

We’ve delivered 700+ buildings across the Midlands with a 97% planning approval rate.

We know how these arguments go. And we know how to win them.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Why do planning authorities object to building height?

Rarely for a specific, evidenced reason. The most common objection — "out of keeping with the surrounding area" — sounds like planning policy but is usually a cultural default. Height is visible in a way that ground coverage isn't, so it attracts objections disproportionately. Committees respond to the volume of objections, not just the quality. That's usually what's really happening.

What counts as a "tall building" under UK planning policy?

Under the London Plan, just six storeys or 18 metres triggers the "tall building" classification and a separate layer of scrutiny. Outside London, there's often no defined metric at all — "tall" is whatever the objecting party considers out of character. For context, the standard Parisian Haussmann block runs to six or seven storeys. The UK's threshold is low by any international measure.

Can height objections be successfully challenged in a planning application?

Yes — with the right argument. Address the specific harm being claimed: Does the building actually overshadow neighbours? Does it conflict with a protected view? Does it genuinely contradict the character of the area beyond simply being taller? If the answer to all three is no, the objection is hard to sustain on policy grounds. Preparation matters more than the height itself.

What should I do if my planning application is being refused on height grounds?

Establish whether the objection is specific or generic. A specific one — "this building overshadows the listed building to the north" — can be addressed through redesign or technical evidence. A generic one needs unpicking on policy grounds. Get the officer's reasoning in writing, cross-reference it against the local plan, and identify whether the stated harm is evidenced or assumed. If you need a second opinion on a live scheme, we're happy to review it.

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