Flat conversion drawings in Sutton

Sutton does not publish a size threshold

Unlike some London boroughs, we found no figure in Sutton's guidance that fixes a minimum house size for flats. Policy comes from the Sutton Local Plan 2016-2031, adopted in 2,018, read with the Urban Design Guide SPD and the Design of Residential Extensions SPD.

Without a bright line, officers judge each scheme on its character, the quality of the flats and the effect on neighbours. We write that judgement into the drawings: a design note on how the street frontage is kept, how each flat gets light, and how the garden is divided between the ground-floor and upper homes.

The borough has an Article 4 direction for small HMOs. It does not prohibit self-contained flats, but if you want to let rooms instead, HMO conversion drawings cover that route.

Gardens, Green Belt and where the plots are

Domestic gardens cover 34.5 per cent of Sutton's land in the national land-use database and 62.9 per cent of households live in a house or bungalow. Garden division is the central design problem: two flats need enough private space each, and both need a sensible route to the bins.

Green Belt covers 14 per cent of the borough. Inside it, any extra built form is tested for harm to openness, and we flag that at the constraints check.

Heritage is lighter than inner London: 8 conservation areas, 209 listed entries and 7 entries on the Heritage at Risk Register. Where it applies, we show the front elevation unchanged.

Will the sums work at Sutton prices?

The average Sutton home sold for £452,654 and the average flat for £284,015. Because the flat figure is so much lower, two flats from one house have to be well designed to beat the value of the house whole. Owner-occupation is high, at 64.4 per cent, which means many of the houses you might convert are family homes; if yours is mortgaged, check the lender's terms early.

Run the numbers before the survey, not after it. We are happy to give a view at the free check on whether the scheme is likely to stack up.

Previous decisions on your road are worth reading too. Sutton's register is public at https://planningregister.sutton.gov.uk/online-applications/, and we search it for conversions, extensions and refusals nearby so the drawings answer the objections officers have already raised in your street.

Levies and what comes with the drawings

Sutton sits in Mayoral levy band 3, the lowest-rate band. For permissions granted this year the indexed rate is £30.3 per square metre. The borough charges £100/m² (Residential, borough-wide), from its schedule of London Borough of Sutton Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Charging Schedule April 2014. A new dwelling loses the small-development exemption, so both apply.

The council's planning fee is £610 for each flat. Sound insulation between the flats must meet Approved Document E: Separating walls 43 dB DnT,w+Ctr (min); floors and stairs 43 dB airborne (min), 64 dB L'nT,w impact (max) for dwellings formed by material change of use. We draw those build-ups on our building regulations drawings in Sutton.

The application is assembled from planning drawings in Sutton. The same service is available in Croydon, Merton and Kingston upon Thames. The borough overview is architectural drawings in Sutton.

After the constraints check we survey, draw layouts in plan and 3D and ask you to choose one in writing before the design is frozen. A second chartered technologist checks every sheet, and if officers ask for changes we redraw at no charge until approval, without promising the decision.