Lawful Development Certificate in Barking and Dagenham

How busy the council is with certificates

Barking and Dagenham recorded 345 certificate applications in its latest government return. The route is well used in the borough.

A certificate application stands or falls on its drawings. The officer has no discretion to weigh design, so a missing dimension or an unclear existing outline can prompt a query. Our set shows the original house, the proposed work and every measurement the Order tests, on sheets that agree with each other.

What the Order allows on a typical house

The deepest single-storey rear extension allowed is described like this: 3 m (attached) / 4 m (detached) beyond the original rear wall, single storey. The height limit is 4 metres. Together with the cap on how much of the garden buildings may cover, those figures decide most extension projects before any design begins.

For a loft, the allowance works by added volume: 40 m³ (terrace house) / 50 m³ (any other house) additional roof volume. We check which figure applies to yours. If your plans exceed it, a planning application in Barking and Dagenham is the next step, and we say so before you pay.

Flats are different again: Householder permitted development (Sch 2 Part 1) does not apply to flats or buildings containing flats.

Measuring the original house on an estate street

On streets of near-identical houses it is tempting to copy a neighbour's drawings. We do not, because every allowance in the Order is measured from the house as first built. A porch, a lean-to or an earlier rear addition counts against the figure, and a previous owner may have used part of it already.

Our surveyor records the walls, the roof and the garden outbuildings on one datum, then compares the result with historic mapping and the evidence on site. The drawings state what is original and what was added, so the officer can follow the sums without a site visit.

The borough also has an Article 4 direction for houses in multiple occupation. If your plan is to let rooms to several tenants, that is a change of use question, not a householder one, and an ordinary certificate will not answer it. We tell you at the quote stage and point you to the right route.

Alterations to a loft or rear that you can lawfully build in the borough often also need building regulations approval. Once the certificate is issued, your builder will need drawings for that too, and we can prepare them from the same survey.

Fee, timing and what we send

The council charges for a proposed-use certificate as follows: Half the normal planning fee (householder: £274). You pay it to the council. Our fixed fee covers the survey, drawings, a second technologist's check and the submission.

If the work is larger than the Order allows, prior approval in Barking and Dagenham can cover some deeper rear extensions, and the neighbours are consulted. For help with a refusal, see planning appeals in Barking and Dagenham.

Start with the area overview in architectural drawings in Barking and Dagenham, or compare how a neighbour handles it in Redbridge and Havering. The full national picture is on our Lawful Development Certificate page.