Planning Application Drawings for UK Homeowners

Planning application drawings from £650

Plan Pros prepares the scaled drawing set for a householder planning application, permitted development certificate or retrospective application. The Standard Planning Pack is a fixed £650. Its first draft is normally issued within 7–10 days once Plan Pros has received the completed self-survey and all project information reasonably needed to start, and either you have expressly requested early commencement or the 14-day cancellation period has ended. Reasonable revisions within the original agreed project brief are included during the active design and review stage. You provide the measurements and photographs; we turn them into a consistent set of planning-stage drawings ready to accompany the application.

See the £650 Standard Planning Pack

Elevation plans and elevation drawings

An elevation is your house drawn flat-on from outside — one drawing per face, to scale, showing windows, doors, rooflines and materials exactly where they are. A planning application wants existing elevations (the house as it stands) and proposed elevations (the house with your extension, dormer or new window in place), because the difference between the two is precisely what the council is being asked to approve. Elevations are where a proposal succeeds or fails on looks, which is why they are worth drawing properly rather than optimistically.

Floor plans

The view from above with the roof lifted off: rooms, walls, openings and dimensions, again in existing and proposed pairs. The proposed floor plan is the drawing you will look at most, because it is where the layout gets argued about at the kitchen table — which is exactly what the included reasonable revisions within the original agreed project brief are for.

Location plans and site plans

The location plan places your property in its surroundings on an Ordnance Survey base, usually at 1:1250, with the site edged in red — it tells the council which house on the street is asking. The site plan (or block plan) zooms in on your plot, showing the building footprint, boundaries and anything relevant nearby. Applications get rejected as invalid for surprisingly small mistakes on these, which is a slow way to lose three weeks.

Section drawings

A section is a vertical slice through the building, showing floor-to-ceiling heights, roof pitch and how the levels relate. Councils ask for sections where height matters — loft conversions and anything near a boundary being the usual suspects.

Building drawings, construction drawings and “blueprints”

These get used loosely, so to untangle them: planning drawings show what the building will look like and where it sits — that is what this page is about, and what the council decides on. Construction drawings (building regulations drawings) come later and show how it is actually built: structure, insulation, drainage, fire escape. They serve building control, a different system with a different checklist — getting planning permission does not exempt you from it. And a blueprint is simply the vintage word for all of the above; the drawings have not been blue since roughly the invention of the photocopier, but we always know what people mean.

Existing and proposed: why every drawing comes in twos

Almost every drawing on a householder application is submitted as a pair. Existing is the building as it stands today; proposed is the same view with your project built. The council is not really assessing your extension in isolation — it is assessing the difference, which is why a proposed elevation with no existing elevation beside it is close to useless to a planning officer. It is also why measuring the existing building accurately matters more than people expect: every proposed drawing is built on top of those numbers, so an error at the survey stage quietly propagates through the whole set.

Scales, north arrows, and the small things that get an application refused as invalid

A planning application can be rejected before anyone has formed an opinion on your extension — not refused on planning grounds, but returned as invalid, which means it never entered the queue at all. It is an unglamorous way to lose several weeks, and it is almost always down to drawing conventions rather than design.

The usual requirements, which most councils in England share:

• Location plan at 1:1250 — on an up-to-date Ordnance Survey base, with your site outlined in red, and any other land you own nearby outlined in blue.
• Site or block plan, usually 1:500 — your plot in detail: footprint, boundaries, parking, trees, drainage where relevant.
• Floor plans, elevations and sections at 1:100 or 1:50 — consistently, across the whole set. Mixing scales without labelling them is a reliable way to be asked again.
• A north arrow on the location and site plans, and a scale bar on everything — a scale bar survives being printed at the wrong size, a written scale does not.
• Drawing numbers and a title on every sheet, so the officer can refer to them in the decision notice, and so a revision can replace exactly one drawing rather than the lot.

One caveat worth knowing: councils publish their own local validation list, and they are not identical. Some want a design and access statement, some want specific ecology or drainage information, some are relaxed about things their neighbours are strict on. Checking your own council’s list before submitting is ten minutes that regularly saves a fortnight — and it is one of the things we check for you as a matter of course.

The drawing set at a glance

• Location plan — which property is asking. 1:1250, red line, north arrow.
• Site / block plan — the plot in detail. Usually 1:500.
• Floor plans — the layout from above, existing and proposed. 1:100 or 1:50.
• Elevations — each face of the building flat-on, existing and proposed. 1:100 or 1:50.
• Sections — a vertical slice showing heights and roof pitch. Asked for where height matters.

Which drawings does your project need?

A householder application — an extension, a loft conversion, a garage conversion — needs the standard set: location and site plans, existing and proposed elevations, existing and proposed floor plans. For one straightforward residential project within the published 50 m² scope, that set is the Standard Planning Pack at a fixed £650, with a normal first draft in 7–10 days once the required project information has been received and either early commencement has been requested or the 14-day cancellation period has ended, plus reasonable revisions within the original agreed project brief. Permitted development projects use the same drawings in service of a Lawful Development Certificate, and if you would rather we did the measuring, the Enhanced Planning Pack adds a measured survey and 3D imaging within the same project limits.

One thing worth separating, because it gets muddled: an application is the planning application forms plus the drawings that go with them. The forms are mostly details copied off your deeds and a description of the work. The drawings are the half that gets applications returned as invalid, and the half we produce.