Building regulations drawings in Lewisham

Article 4 directions and heritage in Lewisham

Lewisham has 57 Article 4 directions across 89 mapped areas, and also 30 conservation areas.

Article 4 directions are planning rules, not building regulations. The practical result is that a Lewisham street can need a planning application for work that would be permitted a few streets away, and the technical drawings then have to match the approved design, not a looser one.

The borough boundary also meets 1 World Heritage Site, and Historic England records 367 list entries. We check the address against all of these before pricing, so the set you receive is for the route that actually applies. A technical drawing cannot rescue a design that planning has not accepted, and a planning approval cannot excuse a detail that fails the Approved Documents. Both approvals are needed, and we line them up before the builder is booked.

Choosing the building control route in Lewisham

With full plans, building control must decide within a set period. Building control body must decide a full plans application within 5 weeks, or longer if agreed in writing. A building notice skips that step and moves the checking onto site.

Roughly 42.2 per cent of Lewisham households live in a house or bungalow and most of the rest in flats. Alterations to terraced houses often involve a party wall, a chimney breast or a shared drain, which is why we favour full plans for them.

The notice rules are short but easy to miss. Give notice of intention to start; work may start 2 days after the notice. After that, the rule is: Notify commencement within 5 days after work is regarded as commenced.

Planning decisions in Lewisham, and how they affect your timetable

Lewisham decided 578 householder applications in its latest published year and granted 89.4 per cent. 95.2 per cent were decided on time.

Those numbers cover all householder projects and tell you nothing about one house. What they do suggest is that the council's planning team keeps to its timetable, so the technical drawings should be ready by the time consent arrives. We start them once the design is settled, not after the decision.

What the Lewisham set includes

Expect foundation and floor plans, sections, wall, floor and roof build-ups, a drainage layout and a materials specification, drawn from the same model as the planning drawings. A second chartered technologist checks each sheet, and building control queries are answered with revised sheets at no extra fee.

Energy rules are changing. AD L 2026 (Home Energy Model) takes effect 24 Mar 2027 for non-higher-risk work, so we state which edition the set is designed to, depending on when you submit.

We ask for the planning decision or certificate, any survey you already hold and details of the existing drains.

Before you start building, read about planning drawings in Lewisham and about structural calculations in Lewisham, because the engineer's figures feed straight into our sheets.

Nearby boroughs and related services

A property across the boundary follows another council's guidance. See building regulations drawings in Greenwich, in Bromley or in Southwark for those. If you are unsure whether the work needs planning at all, a lawful development certificate in Lewisham settles that, and the architectural drawings in Lewisham page covers the borough as a whole.