New build drawings in Croydon

What Croydon's decision figures say about small schemes

Croydon decided 641 minor applications, which covers schemes of fewer than ten homes along with other small proposals. It granted 57.6 per cent and dealt with 86.9 per cent in eight weeks or an agreed extension.

Set that beside householder work, where the council granted 86.6 per cent of 786 decisions. The gap is the reason to spend time on design before submission. These are past council statistics for a mixed group of applications, not a prediction for your site, and no drawing set can promise a result.

What a careful set can do is remove avoidable grounds for refusal: unmeasured gaps, unclear levels, and missing shadow or outlook checks. Our planning drawings in Croydon page explains the submission side.

Green belt, heritage and the edges of the borough

Green belt covers 25 per cent of the council area, so a plot there is tested against the national green belt policy before any design question arises. A new house in the green belt is a very different case from one in a street of Edwardian semis, and we establish which applies at the constraints check.

In the built-up area the heritage picture is lighter than in inner London, with 19 conservation areas and 180 listed entries, yet 15 entries sit on the Heritage at Risk register and 8 scheduled monuments cross the boundary. The council's Conservation Areas General Guidance SPD sets the expectations if your plot touches one.

The local plan in force is the Croydon Local Plan 2018, and we cite the policies that apply to your address in the design note supplied with the drawings.

Levies and fees on a Croydon new home

A new dwelling in Croydon pays the Mayoral CIL in charging band 3, which is the lowest band, at £30.3 per square metre for permissions granted this year. The borough also levies under its London Borough of Croydon Community Infrastructure Levy Charging Schedule April 2013.

The council fee for a scheme of up to nine houses is £610 per dwelling. Biodiversity net gain adds a question of its own: From 6 Aug 2026 BNG does not apply to sites of 0.2 ha or less; the self-build exemption ended for applications from 6 Aug 2026.

With the average Croydon house costing £390,041, and detached homes at £837,514, the numbers often support a small scheme, but the levies need to be in the appraisal from the start. We list them in the quote.

Access, bins and parking on a back-land plot

The drawings that decide a garden-plot scheme are often not the elevations. A fire appliance needs a route to within a set distance of the front door, a refuse crew needs a collection point they can reach without dragging bins down a long drive, and neighbours notice every car that now passes their kitchen window. We draw the access as a plan with its width, surface and turning space marked, then repeat it on the sections where levels change.

Parking is part of the same picture. The national rule is straightforward: Associated parking spaces for new dwellings need EV charge points. That means a charge point on the plan, a cable route and a space big enough to use it, and on a narrow Croydon plot those requirements can move the house a metre or more. We settle them in the options stage, not at building regulations stage, when moving the building is no longer cheap.

Cycle storage and a bin store belong on the same site plan. Showing them early avoids the common request for amended drawings, and it lets the officer see that the plot has been planned as a home and not squeezed for floor area.

How we prepare a Croydon set

We model your plot in Revit after a measured building survey, compare two or three massing options against the garden depth and building line, and ask you to choose one in writing. Then we draw the plans, elevations, sections and street scene.

Once the design is agreed, building regulations drawings in Croydon carry it into construction. If the council asks for amendments, we redraw free of charge until approval.