Locations

CDM principal designer in London

The statutory CDM 2015 principal designer appointment, taken as a standalone service on London projects. Fixed fees, priced online, with the whole appointment handled through short structured forms and one site visit.

Projects we take on in London

• Period house refurbishment and structural alteration
• Rear and side return extensions
• Loft conversions and roof works
• Flat and apartment refurbishment
• Basement and lower ground floor works
• Shop, office and hospitality fit out

What tends to make London projects worth coordinating properly

London projects are rarely difficult because of the work itself. They are difficult because of everything the work is surrounded by. The list below is what tends to make a London pre-construction phase worth doing properly, and none of it applies to every project.

• Occupied buildings. Whether it is the client living in the front of the house, other flats in the same block, or a shop trading underneath, most London work happens around people who are staying put.
• Party wall interfaces on both sides. Terraced and semi-detached stock means adjoining owners, and often adjoining owners above and below as well.
• Basements and structural alteration. Several London boroughs have specific basement policies, and where a project goes down, the temporary works, the underpinning sequence and the effect on the neighbouring structure become the centre of the pre-construction information.
• Restricted access and logistics. No side return, controlled parking, restricted delivery hours, and a scaffold that has to be licensed and often oversails somebody else's land.
• Public interfaces. Busy footways directly outside the work, so hoardings, protection and loading are design questions rather than site improvisation.
• Asbestos and legacy materials. Not the Georgian shell but the twentieth century alterations inside it, which is where artex, insulating board and cement sheet actually live.
• High value existing finishes. Protection costs money and takes time, and the time is easier to find in the programme than in the middle of the job.
• Communal and leasehold arrangements. Managing agents, freeholder consents, shared escape routes and building level fire strategies, all of which are project information a contractor needs.

How the appointment runs

Five steps, short forms, one site visit. The appointment in writing, structured forms to everybody involved, a visit to record the building as it is, the design risks coordinated, and the pre-construction information issued to whoever is pricing and building before work starts. The full process, and what the role covers.

Fees

Fixed fees from £750 plus VAT, read off a published schedule rather than taken as a percentage of your build. The same starting fees apply wherever the project is, and the figure on your confirmed quote is the figure you are invoiced: there is no expenses line and nothing is added afterwards. The fee schedule.

This is the CDM role, not the Building Regulations one

Since October 2023 England has had a second principal designer role, under Part 2A of the Building Regulations 2010. It is a separate appointment about designing to meet the Building Regulations, and ClearCDM does not provide it. Most projects that need one need both. The difference in full.

Areas we publish local pages for

Each of these has its own page with the local building stock, the borough's own conservation and basement position, and what that means for a CDM appointment. They are researched individually rather than being one page with the name changed.

• Hampstead NW3
• Belsize Park NW3
• Highgate N6
• St John's Wood NW8
• Marylebone W1U
• Mayfair W1K
• Knightsbridge SW1X
• Chelsea SW3
• South Kensington SW7
• Fulham SW6
• Battersea SW11
• Richmond TW9

We work across London, not only in these areas. They are the ones we have written up properly.

The honest position on being a Bristol firm working in London

ClearCDM is based in Bristol. We do not have a London office and we are not going to invent one. It is worth saying because a serviced address used as a local presence is the first dishonest thing on a lot of websites in this field.

What it means in practice is that the site visit is planned into the programme rather than assumed to be available at a day's notice. It does not mean a different price: the published starting fees are the same for a London project as for a Bristol one.

And most of the appointment does not depend on being local at all. The information gathering is structured and online, the design coordination happens with your design team wherever they are, and the documents are the same documents. The part that genuinely benefits from being on site is the visit, and that is one visit, properly planned.

Questions we get asked in London

Nearby

• South East
• Bristol
• All locations

Written by Robbie Thompson, BA (Hons) Dip Arch, SMSTSLast reviewed 28 August 2026How we write this

Sources

1. CDM 2015, regulation 5 legislation.gov.uk
2. CDM 2015, regulation 7 legislation.gov.uk
3. HSE: principal designers, roles and responsibilities hse.gov.uk
4. Historic England: conserving Georgian and Victorian terraced housing
5. Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: basements supplementary planning document, April 2016 local plan policy CL7
6. London Borough of Camden: basement developments and Camden Planning Guidance on basements local plan policy A5
7. London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham: article 4 directions borough wide basement direction, in force 26 April 2018

Price your London project

A few questions about the works and you have a fixed fee in about two minutes, and the figure you see is the figure you are invoiced.

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