Building regulations drawings in Sutton

Gardens, trees and drains: the Sutton site conditions

Domestic gardens cover 34.5 per cent of the borough's land in the national land-use data, and 62.9 per cent of households live in a house or bungalow. Those gardens give room to extend, and a drain under the garden is often what the technical drawings must solve.

A new extension may sit over an existing drain, or alongside a shared sewer. Building over a drain needs protection and access, and in some cases the drain has to be diverted. We plot the known drain routes from the survey and the records, and show the solution on the sheets, so building control and the water company are answered before the digger arrives. If the position of a drain is uncertain, we say so and recommend a drain survey before the foundations are fixed.

Trees matter too. A mature tree near a new foundation can force a deeper trench, and that has to be drawn and priced before work starts. About 14 per cent of the council area is covered by green-belt polygons, which sits in planning and not the Building Regulations, but affects how much a house near that land may grow.

Conservation areas and listed buildings in Sutton

Sutton has 8 conservation areas and Historic England lists 209 entries in the borough, alongside 6 scheduled monuments. These are modest numbers, so many Sutton houses can be extended without heritage constraints.

Where a house is covered, the planning officer will look at windows, roofs and materials. We draw the technical details so that they satisfy building control and match what was agreed with planning.

Planning speed in Sutton and the building control programme

Sutton decided 601 householder applications in its latest published year, granted 91.8 per cent and decided 94.8 per cent on time. For larger home extensions under prior approval it granted 9 and refused 35.

A high grant rate is not a promise about your house, and we never treat it as one. We use it for planning the programme: with planning usually decided on time, we aim to finish the technical set as the decision arrives.

Building control body must decide a full plans application within 5 weeks, or longer if agreed in writing. A building notice, by contrast, ceases after 3 years unless work has started, which suits small jobs and not a project that might wait.

What you receive in Sutton

The set normally includes foundation and floor plans, sections, wall, floor and roof build-ups, a drainage layout and a materials specification. A second chartered technologist checks every sheet, and revisions after a building control query are included in the fee. We ask for the planning decision or certificate, any survey you hold and the location of known drains.

If an earlier extension exists, we record how it was built, because a new addition must join it safely and building control will ask what the old structure is made of. Where records are missing, we show the junction as an opening-up detail and agree the approach with the examiner.

The design stage is covered in planning drawings in Sutton, the engineer's figures in structural calculations in Sutton and the energy calculation in SAP calculations in Sutton.

Nearby boroughs and the wider Sutton service

For the whole borough, see architectural drawings in Sutton. Across the boundary, building regulations drawings in Croydon, in Merton and in Epsom and Ewell follow each council's own planning guidance.