Architectural drawings in Bexley

Conservation areas, listed buildings and ancient sites

There are 23 conservation areas in Bexley, published by the council. Permitted development is cut back in them, and our first check is always whether your house sits inside one.

Historic England lists 114 entries in the borough: 6 at Grade I, 9 at Grade II* and 99 at Grade II.

The borough also holds 4 scheduled monuments and 4 registered parks and gardens, so we check an address against them before planning any deep excavation.

Green belt and plot size

About 17 per cent of the borough is covered by green-belt designation, so extensions on the edge of the built area are tested for proportion against the original house.

Gardens cover roughly 25.1 per cent of the borough's land in the national land use data.

We rebuild the original footprint from your survey so any earlier addition is counted before we propose a new one.

How Bexley decides householder applications

In the latest twelve months of published figures the council decided 877 householder applications and granted 94.6 per cent of them. In all, 99.4 per cent were decided within eight weeks or an agreed extension.

These are past borough-wide figures. They do not predict any single outcome, but they show that most householder applications here were granted.

Larger home extension prior approvals were closer to even: 7 granted and 8 refused in the latest statistics year.

The national statistics series counts 939 householder decisions in its latest year, with 95.3 per cent granted and 99 per cent decided in time. Both sources describe a council that decides quickly, which helps when you are planning a builder's start date.

What homes cost and what you may owe

68.6 per cent of households own their home, and a terraced house sold for £416,198 on average in the latest Land Registry data. Extensions are often the practical way to gain space without moving.

Bexley is in band 3 of the Mayor of London's levy, at £30.3 per square metre for permissions granted this year, and has its own schedule, the London Borough of Bexley Community Infrastructure Levy Charging Schedule April 2015.

Smaller schemes, certificates and values

Beyond householder work, the council decided 238 minor applications in the same period, such as a new dwelling or a small conversion. Of those, 82.4 per cent were granted and 94.1 per cent were decided in time.

A further 323 lawful development certificate applications were handled in the latest statistics year. If you want written proof that a loft or extension is lawful, for a lender or a future sale, this route is widely used.

The borough has 95,300 households and a population of 257,103. A detached house sold for £736,523 on average, a semi-detached one for £534,337 and a flat for £244,998, with prices changing by 2 per cent over twelve months.

Those gaps are worth weighing when choosing between extending and moving. We show the cost of each option clearly, and we say plainly when a smaller scheme gives the owner most of the benefit.

What we do before drawing a Bexley house

The first step is a free constraints check on your address: conservation area, listed status, green belt, trees and planning history. It costs nothing and tells you which route applies before you spend on a survey.

Next a measured survey records the house and plot. From it we rebuild the original footprint, count earlier additions and test your brief against both parts of the council's design guide. You then choose between options shown in plan and 3D.

A second chartered technologist, never the person who drew the set, checks every sheet before it is submitted. The council's own application fee is separate from our fixed fee.

Architectural drawings services across Bexley

Typical Bexley jobs begin with planning drawings in Bexley, garage conversion plans in Bexley or side return extension drawings in Bexley. A Lawful Development Certificate in Bexley records what you may build without an application.

Next door, see our pages for Greenwich, Bromley and Dartford.