Ealing Development Finance: 2 Unit Residential Scheme at 10 Duncan Grove Acton W3 7NN Enters the Pipeline

Ealing development finance is back in focus this week after a new application landed on the London Borough of Ealing's planning register. Application 262772FUL, covering 10 Duncan Grove in Acton, W3 7NN, is pending decision and proposes converting a single dwellinghouse into two self-contained dwellings. The scheme also includes changing the roof from hip to gable end, a rear roof extension with a Juliet balcony, two rooflights to the front roofslope, a basement dug out with lightwells to the front and side, a single storey rear extension over the new basement, again with a Juliet balcony, following demolition of the existing rear addition, plus a new fence and altered side windows. Per the planning register, the application was received on 14 July 2026 and remains under assessment.

It is a small scheme by unit count, just 2 dwellings, but it sits squarely in the pattern we see across Ealing and Acton: owners taking a single family house and splitting it into two flats via a heavy back-and-below conversion rather than a ground-up rebuild. Basement digs, roof alterations and rear extensions of this kind are a common route to adding a second unit on a plot that would never get consent for a new build, and they tend to move through committee faster than larger schemes because the footprint barely changes. Construction Capital's own estimate puts the finished gross development value at £1,010,000, which gives some sense of scale for anyone benchmarking against other Acton conversions. For background on values and activity across the borough, our Ealing location page tracks the wider picture street by street.

The finance angle here is straightforward but not trivial. A basement excavation with lightwells, a roof rebuild and two Juliet balconies is a specification job, not a light refurbishment, so a standard buy to let mortgage will not touch it during the works. Sponsors on schemes like this usually need a development or heavy refurbishment facility that covers purchase or land cost, build cost and a contingency, released in stages against a monitoring surveyor's sign off. On a £1,010,000 GDV scheme, specialist commercial lenders and bridging specialists in this bracket typically advance somewhere between 60% and 65% loan to GDV, which would put a likely facility in the region of £600,000 to £655,000, alongside day one funding against the site itself. Challenger banks tend to want the basement structural design and party wall position locked down before they will commit terms.

Our read as brokers is that this is a viable but not simple deal. The basement and roof works both carry cost overrun risk, so we would want a realistic contingency built into any facility from the outset rather than added later once works are underway. Sponsors approaching lenders on this or similar Acton schemes should have a fixed price build contract, a structural engineer's basement design and a clear exit, either sale or refinance onto a term product, ready before the first conversation with a lender. We expect more applications of this shape to come through the borough's register over the rest of the year, and our desk will keep tracking them as decisions land.