Wraparound extension drawings in Croydon

Where Croydon's houses are

About 60.2 per cent of Croydon households live in a house, and 54.7 per cent own their home. The inner north of the borough is flats and terraces; the south has interwar semis on generous plots that suit a wraparound.

Domestic gardens cover 32.8 per cent of the borough's land so most plots still have a rear garden worth protecting. Green-belt polygons cover 25 per cent of the area, mostly in the south, where a proportionate-addition test replaces the usual permitted development comparison.

We check your plot against the mapped Green Belt before quoting.

Croydon's Article 4 direction on houses in multiple occupation matters to landlords. If the extension adds living space that could be used for shared lets, the council may look harder at the layout, so we tell clients when a plan crosses that line.

The national limits, then Croydon's heritage

The side arm must fit the first test: Side extension: single storey, max 4 m high, max half the width of the original house. The rear arm must meet the second: 3 m (attached) / 4 m (detached) beyond the original rear wall, single storey. They are then judged together: Limits apply to the total enlargement (new part plus any existing enlargement it joins).

Croydon has 19 conservation areas and Historic England lists 180 entries in the borough. In those areas: On article 2(3) land (conservation areas etc.): no side extensions, no cladding, no rear extension of more than one storey under Class A. A wraparound there is a planning application, not a permitted development job.

A long rear garden is not a licence for a deep rear arm. Officers look at the neighbour's windows at the boundary, and a deep arm on a semi may need to step in from the boundary line or lower its roof.

If your house has already been extended, bring any earlier approval documents. They allow us to confirm what counts as the original house, which is the baseline for every limit above.

Prior approval and householder results in Croydon

Croydon granted 17 larger-extension prior approvals in the latest twelve months and refused 34. Refusals outnumber grants, and a wraparound's side arm sits outside that route anyway, so a householder application for the whole scheme is usually cleaner.

For householder applications Croydon decided 786 cases in its latest year, granted 86.6 per cent and decided 94.4 per cent in time. Those are borough-wide results for all home improvements.

These numbers should not be read as a prediction. They tell you how busy the council is and how it has treated similar cases overall, and your own outcome will depend on the drawing quality, the neighbours and the street.

Wraparound extension drawings in Croydon: the package

The council's householder fee is £548. Digging for the foundations may need a notice: Adjacent excavation notice at least 1 month before work: within 3 m and deeper than the neighbour's foundations, or within 6 m and cutting a 45° line from their foundations.

Drawings start at £1,195 including VAT. A second chartered technologist checks each sheet, and if the council asks for changes we redraw at no charge. See house extension drawings in Croydon for the alternatives, side return extension drawings in Croydon for a smaller scheme, and architectural drawings in Croydon for the borough overview. Next door, see Bromley.

Many clients ask whether to submit the wraparound as one application or to phase it. Phasing can look cheaper, but the second phase is judged with the first already built, so we usually draw the whole scheme and agree the order of works afterwards.

We keep the digital model of your house after the drawings are issued. If the council comments, or you change your mind about the depth, the revised set is a quick edit and not a restart.