Measured Building Surveys · DA7 Bexleyheath
Bexley applies standard suburban householder control across DA7, a settled inter-war family market with no conservation constraints.
Because Bexley decides fast and expects the drawings to be right: 97.9% of householder decisions came inside eight weeks and 91.7% were approved, third highest of the 33. It withdrew only 3.0% of applications before decision, the joint lowest withdrawal rate in London alongside Newham.
| Measure | Bexley | London |
|---|---|---|
| Decided inside eight weeks | 97.9% | — |
| Householder approval rate | 91.7% | 83.0% |
| Applications withdrawn before decision | 3.0% | 7.4% |
| Householder decisions made | 2,859 | 77,680 |
| Lawful development certificates issued | 882 | — |
| Measured survey, floor plans from | £245 | our fixed fee |
Sources: decision figures from MHCLG District Planning Application Statistics (PS1 and PS2), twelve quarters to March 2026; the survey fee is our own published fixed fee. Retrieved 1 September 2026. None of Bexley’s 31 conservation areas carries a date in the national register, so heritage status on a DA7 address has to be confirmed against the council’s own policies map.
Bexleyheath DA7 — local contextDA7 is one slice of a larger borough. Fees, timings and the council's current position on this work are all set out under measured building surveys in Bexley.
A measured building survey captures your Bexleyheath property exactly — every wall, opening, level and boundary — as the accurate base for design and planning drawings. On DA7's older terraced and villa stock around Bexleyheath, Barnehurst, Crook Log, Northumberland Heath fringe, walls are rarely square, so a laser-measured survey prevents costly errors before Bexley Council ever sees the application.
Leica Disto for laser distance work, BLK360 for point-cloud capture, AutoCAD and Revit for the deliverables, and an MCIAT chartered technologist behind all of it.
Across Bexleyheath, Barnehurst, Crook Log, Northumberland Heath fringe in DA7, the dominant property is inter-war bay-fronted semis and terraces around bexleyheath and barnehurst, with post-war infill. That stock shapes what measured building survey looks like here: the right approach for a period terrace differs from a mansion-block flat or a new-build, and Bexley Council judges each on design quality and neighbour impact. We survey the specific Bexleyheath property, confirm the planning route — Permitted Development, a Lawful Development Certificate, or full planning — and draw a council-ready set tailored to the DA7 streetscape.
Housing stock in DA7: inter-war bay-fronted semis and terraces through Bexleyheath and Barnehurst, with post-war infill dropped in between. Borough-wide, 37.0% of homes were built during the 1930s alone (VOA council tax stock, 31 March 2025).
Within the district: Bexleyheath, Barnehurst, Crook Log, Northumberland Heath fringe.
Streets we know in DA7: the Barnehurst estate roads, the Crook Log streets and the inter-war terraces around Erith Road. Each road has its own building line, boundary treatment and precedent that Bexley Council weighs when assessing a measured building survey scheme.
Getting around DA7: two stations, Barnehurst and Bexleyheath, both on the line running into London Bridge and Cannon Street.
Property values: 450 DA7 sales were registered during 2025, at a median of £480,000. That is the number to keep in view while weighing what a build will cost. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data
Who decides, and how much of it: DA7 sits wholly inside the London Borough of Bexley, which determined 3,938 applications of every type over twelve quarters of MHCLG returns ending last March and settled 3,831 of them under officer delegation. Committee time is scarce, so a submission has to make its case on the drawings alone. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
Borough character: outer south-east London suburbia, and among the more forgiving planning environments in the capital — Bexley granted 2,622 of the 2,859 householder applications it decided over three years to last March. Pool all 33 boroughs and the equivalent figure comes out at 83.0%.
A chartered technologist visits the property, kit in hand: Leica Disto for linear work, BLK360 for the scan. Ninety minutes covers the site visit on a typical Bexleyheath terrace of two or three bedrooms.
Everything is modelled in Revit or drawn in AutoCAD, then plotted at 1:50 where the detail earns it and 1:100 elsewhere. Tolerance: accurate to plus or minus 3mm point to point. Annotation covers rooms, openings, fittings, services.
Every elevation, and sections cut where they explain the building. Case officers expect to see them. So does the surveyor drawing up a party wall award. Structural design without them is guesswork.
Scanning with the BLK360 leaves a complete point cloud behind, which is the answer for bay windows, cranked roof planes, listed fabric and any building whose corners turned out not to be square.
Exports run to DWG, RVT, PDF and IFC between them, so an architect, an engineer or a builder can open whichever file suits without coming back to ask for a conversion.
An accuracy report closes each job: accurate to plus or minus 3mm point to point, and within 5mm end to end across the building. Insurers want that evidence, case officers want it, and no party wall surveyor will settle an award without it.
Single planning or building-regs submission.
Planning + building regs + structural.
Listed, conservation or complex sites.
DA7 is a settled family suburb, largely inter-war bay-fronted semis around Barnehurst and Bexleyheath. That is close to ideal ground for a rear or side extension, and for turning a hipped roof into a gable with a dormer behind. Plenty of that work runs on permitted development instead of a full application, and Bexley recorded 882 certificates of lawful development across three years, which is how householders around here get the position in writing.
On a semi, usually. Hip-to-gable with a rear dormer fits inside the 50 cubic metre volume the GPDO allows a semi-detached or detached house; on a terrace the allowance drops to 40 cubic metres, which is where schemes come unstuck. A certificate is what puts the answer beyond dispute. The fee for a lawful development certificate is £274. Head height under the ridge decides feasibility, so that gets measured first, then the scheme is drawn for Building Control too, because the new floor and the stair both need signing off.
Often, because the plots out here are wide. A wrap-around at ground level or a two-storey side addition both sit comfortably on the standard inter-war semi, provided the design clears Bexley's neighbour-amenity policy and the 45-degree test taken from the nearest habitable window next door. Planning drawings and building regulations drawings come off the same model here, produced in parallel rather than one after the other.
What DA7 buys is a settled suburb with fast trains to London Bridge and Cannon Street, and a median sale price last year of £480,000. What additional floor area does to that number is not something any dataset in front of us measures, so no percentage is offered here. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data
Against a DA7 median of £480,000 across 450 registered sales, what the drawings cost is a small share of the budget. It is not the only fee, though. Bexley levies the statutory charge on top: The householder application fee in England is £548, and a full application costs £610. Drawings are quoted as one fixed sum, with no charge for attending a DA7 address to survey it. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data
Three to four weeks from instruction to submission is the normal shape of a DA7 job, whether the address sits in Bexleyheath, out at Barnehurst or over towards Crook Log. Week one goes on the survey. The drawings and your revisions occupy weeks two and three. Then validation and the statutory clock at Bexley, eight weeks for a householder application. That leg is dependable here: 2,364 of the 2,415 householder decisions taken outside a performance agreement were issued within the eight weeks. We stay on the file until the decision lands.
DA7 lies entirely inside Bexley, so Bexley Council is the decision-maker. Worth knowing what follows if it decides against you: the Planning Inspectorate determined 743 appeals from this borough, allowing 238 and dismissing 505. Roughly a third get overturned. Read that carefully, though. Everyone in that count had already been refused and chose to fight on, which makes them a self-selected group rather than a cross-section of applicants. So 32% is not an approval rate, and none of it improves the odds on a first submission. Whether an Article 4 direction bites at your exact address is something we confirm before quoting. Source: Planning Inspectorate appeal decisions
Almost always. New openings, steelwork, a loft floor, fresh foundations — any of those brings Building Regulations approval with it. Three parts of the Approved Documents do the work: A for structure, B for escape in a fire, L for the thermal envelope. Lodge that package with the council's own Building Control team, or hand it to an approved inspector instead; either route is open to you. Given how much of DA7 is joined to the house next door, notice usually has to go in well ahead of the steel arriving: the statutory period is two months for a party structure notice under section 3. Both strands are coordinated inside the Complete package.
Honestly, we cannot put a figure on it. No dataset this practice holds attributes a share of sale price to an extension, and the percentages that circulate for it trace back to nothing. What can be stated is the base against which you are spending: the Land Registry logged 450 DA7 sales during 2025, median £480,000. What can also be stated is where money reliably goes wrong, which is a scheme discovered to be unapproved when you come to sell, or one Building Control declines to certify. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data
If your site sits close to the edge of the borough, it is worth checking the authority next door. Browse everything we do in DA5, DA6 and DA15.
Pick a slot that suits you. No obligation and no sales pressure, just straight answers on your planning route.
The places inside DA7 we draw in, what was built in each of them, and who validates a survey drawing there. One caution about the table: the money in it is the statutory England application charge for 2026, and bears no relation to a survey fee.
| Postcode | Area | Dominant stock | What it means for a measured building survey |
|---|---|---|---|
| DA7 | Bexleyheath / Barnehurst | 1930s semi-detached | No permission attaches to measuring a building. Bexleyheath and Barnehurst in DA7 are almost entirely semi-detached and detached houses of one decade, and the giveaway on site is the bay window — original curved bays and later squared replacements measure very differently indeed. |
| DA7 | Bexleyheath | 1930s semi-detached | Bexleyheath falls inside DA7, and proposals for work here go to Bexley Council to be determined. |
| DA7 | Barnehurst | 1930s semi-detached | Barnehurst also falls inside DA7; the determining authority for any work at these addresses is Bexley Council. |
| DA1 | Crayford / Dartford fringe | Victorian terraces, 1930s semi-detached | Adjoining district to DA7. Surveying needs no consent here either — Bexley has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| DA5 | Old Bexley | Georgian villas, Victorian cottages | Adjoining district to DA7. Surveying needs no consent here either — Bexley has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
Move a few streets across DA7 and the roof pitch has changed, the wall construction has changed, and so has the amount of garden left to build into. Each of them governs what can actually be established on site at a given address.
How designation changes a DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst) measured building survey: Bexley Council maintains 16 conservation areas, including Bexley Village, Old Bexley, Crayford. Inside any of them a DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst) measured building survey cannot rely on permitted development, and the route becomes a £548 householder application determined in 8 weeks rather than a £249 prior approval in 6 weeks. Bexley Village sets the tone for DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst) casework.
No blanket Article 4 over DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst): Bexley Council has not withdrawn permitted development across DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst), so a measured building survey outside a DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst) conservation area usually keeps it. The £274 Lawful Development Certificate is still the document a DA7 owner wants on file.
The building fabric around DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst): 1930s semi-detached dominates; Victorian cottages in Bexley Village and Crayford; post-war estates in Thamesmead and Erith. Outer south-east London suburban; very permissive planning environment; strong PD uptake for extensions and loft conversions. A measured building survey in DA7 (Bexleyheath / Barnehurst) is scoped against that stock first, because it decides whether the scheme runs as permitted development, a £274 Lawful Development Certificate, or a full £548 application to Bexley Council.
Sources for this DA7 measured building survey page: borough policies maps and conservation-area registers (2025–26), Royal Mail postcode district boundaries, the Town and Country Planning (Fees for Applications) (England) Regulations, the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015 as amended, and the Party Wall etc. Act 1996.
Free fixed quote in 60 seconds. MCIAT chartered.
Get my free quote →Or contact us about your project firstYou can browse every service and area to find the right fit, or create a free account to track your project. When you are ready, get a quote in minutes — most homeowners have a fee in minutes — or contact us for a chat and a chartered technologist will be in touch.
