A planning application is decided on its drawings. The case officer never visits most sites, the neighbours form their view from the elevations, and the builder prices from the plans. This guide lists what a complete householder set contains, the standards each drawing must meet, what councils add through local validation checklists, and how the planning set grows into the Building Regulations package you will build from.
The national requirements
The national list of information for a householder application, set by the government and applied by every council in England, comes down to these items.
- Application form. Completed online through the Planning Portal or the council’s own portal, with the ownership certificate signed.
- Fee. £528 for a householder application in England from 1 April 2025 (verify before applying). Lawful Development Certificates for proposed work are £264.
- Location plan at 1:1250 or 1:2500 on an up-to-date Ordnance Survey base, the application site edged red, other land you own edged blue, and at least two named roads shown.
- Block plan (site plan) at 1:500 or 1:200 showing the proposal in relation to the site boundaries, neighbouring buildings, trees and access, with a north point.
- Existing and proposed floor plans at 1:100 or 1:50 for every floor affected.
- Existing and proposed elevations at 1:100 or 1:50 of every elevation that changes, including the flank walls neighbours will see.
- Sections where the proposal changes roof form or levels, which for lofts and two-storey extensions means always.
- Community Infrastructure Levy form, where the council charges CIL; most householder extensions are exempt but the form is still required by many boroughs.
Every drawing carries a title block with the scale, the paper size the scale applies to, a scale bar, the drawing number and revision, and a north point on plans.
What makes the set approvable rather than merely valid
Validation gets the application into the queue. Approval depends on what the drawings show and how clearly they show it.
- Existing and proposed side by side. Officers compare them constantly. Drawing them at the same scale on matching sheets, with the original house outline shown on the proposed plan, removes guesswork.
- Dimensions that prove the case. For a rear extension the depth from the original rear wall and the heights to eaves and ridge; for a loft the volume calculation; for an outbuilding the height from the highest adjacent ground. If the number is on the drawing the officer does not have to scale it off.
- Context. Neighbouring extensions, windows facing the site and the 45-degree daylight line drawn on the section or plan, so the daylight case is made before it is questioned.
- Materials called out. Brick match, roof finish, window frames and colour, because “materials to match existing” is the single most common condition and the most common cause of dispute on site.
- A short design statement, even where none is required, explaining why the scheme takes the form it does and how it responds to the council’s guidance.
What local validation checklists add
Each council publishes its own checklist of additional requirements, and it is the local list that catches people out. Items we meet regularly across London and the Home Counties:
- Design and access statement in conservation areas, and heritage statement for listed buildings or their settings.
- Daylight and sunlight assessment where a two-storey element sits close to a neighbour’s windows.
- Tree survey and arboricultural impact assessment where a protected tree or a tree in a conservation area is within falling distance of the works.
- Flood risk assessment in Flood Zones 2 and 3, which cover parts of most riverside boroughs and the Lee, Thames, Colne and Wey valleys.
- Biodiversity and bat survey for roof works on older buildings in some councils.
- Basement impact assessment in the boroughs with basement policies, notably Camden, Kensington and Chelsea and Westminster.
Our area pages note the constraints we meet most often for each council, and we read the current checklist before every submission because they change.
The most common validation failures
Councils reject applications for validation, before any planning judgement, for the same handful of reasons: no red line or the wrong red line on the location plan, plans without a scale bar, missing elevations of a flank wall that changes, a section omitted on a roof scheme, the CIL form left out, and a fee calculated for the wrong application type. Each one restarts the clock. A complete set validated first time is worth two or three weeks on a typical London application.
From planning set to Building Regulations set
Planning drawings describe the building’s form and appearance. To build it you need a second set that describes construction: foundations and structure coordinated with the engineer’s calculations, wall, floor and roof build-ups with insulation values, fire separation and escape, drainage, ventilation, and the specification notes building control will inspect against. On a typical extension the Building Regulations package runs to two or three times the drawing content of the planning set and takes three to five weeks after approval. Our Building Regulations drawings page describes what it includes.
What we deliver
A planning documentation package from Magna Studio contains every national item above, the local checklist items your council requires, a written permitted development assessment where the route is a Lawful Development Certificate, and submission and case officer liaison through to the decision. For an indicative fee for your project, use the instant estimate.
