A seven-bedroom family home in St John’s Wood is to go to Westminster's planning committee for permission to be demolished and rebuilt.

An application has been submitted to demolish 43 Springfield Road and replace it with a larger property including a full-width basement excavation.

The house was built in the 1950s and is identified in the conservation area audit for the St. John’s Wood Conservation Area as an "Unlisted Building of Merit".

Westminster's Labour group has appealed for Westminster's planning committee to reject the application when it is heard on March 22.

The house is 330 sq metres and boasts seven bedrooms and a garage.

Owner Oleg Pavlov wishes to knock this down and replace it with a much larger house of 650 sq metres which will have one fewer bedroom than before, but extra space taken up with dressing rooms, extra bathrooms, a gym, games room and cinema room.

Cllr Geoff Barraclough, shadow cabinet member for planning, wants the applicant to retrofit the property as he said 300 tonnes of CO2 will be released in a complete rebuild – six times the average for new houses in the UK.

He said: "It is true that the new house would be more energy efficient that the current one. But according to the applicant’s own report, it would take 50 years before the carbon used in construction is offset by these savings."

Objections on the planning portal include over development, damage to nearby properties due to basement excavation, and harm to the conservation area.

Cllr Barraclough added: “We need to reduce our carbon emissions today, not in 2072. There is no reason why the current building could not be retrofitted so that it uses less energy.

"And there is no good reason for demolishing a perfectly good family home.”

The applicant's design statement said the scheme offers smaller overall height and mass to the main part of building and garage, is set back from the street and the ground floor aligns with neighbouring properties.

It said the existing house "is of significantly lesser quality than the other neo-Georgian detached houses in the street".

"It is built in cheaper materials, has no architectural detailing of note, and has been extended so that it no longer has any symmetry or balance."

Mr Pavlov and agent Gerald Eve were approached for comment.