Measured Building Surveys · SE20 Anerley
Bromley controls SE20's conservation areas around Penge; SE20 is one of south-east London's most affordable period markets.
Bromley, for Anerley and Penge. That matters to the timetable: Bromley approved 79.8% of householder applications, below the 83.0% London figure, and 5.1% of its decisions ran past thirteen weeks — one of the wider tails in the capital. Bromley holds 69 conservation areas covering 1,302 hectares of the borough.
| Measure | Bromley | London |
|---|---|---|
| Householder approval rate | 79.8% | 83.0% |
| Decided beyond thirteen weeks | 5.1% | — |
| Householder decisions made | 4,706 | 77,680 |
| Conservation areas | 69 covering 1,302 ha | 1,141 across London |
| Lawful development certificates issued | 1,675 | — |
| 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; conservation areas from planning.data.gov.uk, retrieved 1 September 2026; the survey fee is our own published fixed fee. SE20 sits close to the Croydon and Lewisham boundaries, so the first thing a survey settles is which authority determines the application.
Anerley SE20 — local contextIf the job spans more than this district, our measured building surveys in Bromley page covers the borough as a whole.
A measured building survey captures your Anerley property exactly — every wall, opening, level and boundary — as the accurate base for design and planning drawings. On SE20's older terraced and villa stock around Penge, Anerley, Crystal Palace Park fringe, walls are rarely square, so a laser-measured survey prevents costly errors before Bromley Council ever sees the application.
Disto laser measurement, BLK360 point clouds, output as AutoCAD and Revit files, MCIAT chartered throughout.
Across Penge, Anerley, Crystal Palace Park fringe in SE20, the dominant property is victorian and edwardian terraces and villas around penge and anerley, with mansion blocks and post-war pockets near the crystal palace park. 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 Bromley Council judges each on design quality and neighbour impact. We survey the specific Anerley property, confirm the planning route — Permitted Development, a Lawful Development Certificate, or full planning — and draw a council-ready set tailored to the SE20 streetscape.
Housing stock in SE20: Victorian and Edwardian terraces and villas through Penge and Anerley, with interwar mansion blocks and post-war infill nearer Crystal Palace Park. Borough-wide, 12.1% of Bromley's 143,430 dwellings pre-date 1900 and 25.7% went up in the 1930s, shares recorded at 31 March 2025.
Within the district: Penge, Anerley, Crystal Palace Park fringe.
Streets we know in SE20: the Alexandra Cottages, the Penge High Street area, Maple Road and the Anerley streets. Each road has its own building line, boundary treatment and precedent that Bromley Council weighs when assessing a measured building survey scheme.
Conservation areas: Alexandra Cottages, Penge High Street and Crystal Palace Park. Within those boundaries the permitted-development shortcut disappears, and any external alteration needs consent, supported by a heritage statement that answers the appraisal for that particular area.
Getting around SE20: Penge West and Anerley sit on the Overground; Penge East and Kent House give the National Rail link towards Victoria.
Property values: the Land Registry recorded 294 SE20 sales in 2025 at a median of £420,000 — a firmer basis for judging what a scheme is worth adding than any round-number rule of thumb. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data
Borough character: at 150 square kilometres, Bromley holds more land than any other London borough, and just 49.3% of that is built up — the lowest share of any London authority we hold data for. Green Belt covers much of the rest. Designation is concentrated in the town centres — conservation areas are thin on the ground elsewhere, and the borough is comparatively relaxed outside them.
The visit is done by a chartered technologist, who brings a Leica Disto and a BLK360 to the property. Most Anerley terraces of two or three bedrooms are finished inside an hour and a half.
Drawn up in AutoCAD or Revit, issued at 1:50 or 1:100, and dimensionally true to within 3mm. Rooms, openings, fittings and the services you can actually see get labelled, not left for a builder to guess at.
Every elevation, plus the cross-sections, is included as standard — the drawings a planning case needs, the ones the engineer works from, and the ones an award between neighbours depends on. Reissuing a survey later to add them costs more than having them now.
The BLK360 produces a full point cloud rather than a set of dimensions, which is what you want on the older Penge and Anerley stock, on anything listed, and on any building whose walls stopped being square a century ago.
Exported as DWG, RVT, PDF and IFC, so whoever picks the file up next — architect, engineer, contractor — can open it without conversion losses.
Each survey ships with an accuracy report to RICS standards: point-to-point within 3mm, and within 5mm anywhere in the building. Insurers, councils and any party wall surveyor appointed all work from that document.
Single planning or building-regs submission.
Planning + building regs + structural.
Listed, conservation or complex sites.
Yes. Maple Road and the Anerley streets are lined with late-Victorian and Edwardian terraces and villas that suit side-return, rear and loft schemes. Away from the conservation areas, a good deal of that stays within permitted development, recorded by a Lawful Development Certificate. We establish the route first, then draw to the validation checklist the council actually publishes.
Alexandra Cottages is a conservation area built as Victorian model housing, and its value lies in how uniform it is. That makes materials and form the things officers examine hardest there. We design to match rather than to contrast, and submit with a heritage statement written for that appraisal wherever the designation reaches.
Outside the three designated areas, usually yes — a rear dormer or an L-shape held within the volume allowance, with a Lawful Development Certificate afterwards to put it on record. Inside Alexandra Cottages or Penge High Street, roof alterations lose that route and need a full application. Which of the two applies is a question about your road, and often about your side of it.
Penge remains one of the better-value pockets of period housing in this part of London: the district's median sale in 2025 was £420,000, against £525,000 across Bromley as a whole on 4,410 borough transactions. Adding a loft or a side return buys family space for a fraction of what trading up to the borough median would cost. Overground services from Penge West and Anerley keep demand steady. Source: HM Land Registry Price Paid Data
Weigh the drawing fee against what SE20 property is actually worth — £420,000 at the 2025 median, on Land Registry price-paid returns — and it turns out to be a modest fraction of the asset the work improves. The council's own statutory charge then applies as well: £548 on a householder case, £610 where a full application is needed. Our drawings are quoted as a single fixed figure, and the initial site survey across the district is free. Contains HM Land Registry data (c) Crown copyright and database right 2026
Instruction to submission runs three to four weeks across Penge, Anerley and the Crystal Palace Park fringe. The measured survey happens in week one; drawings and your amendments occupy weeks two and three; then validation and Bromley's eight-week statutory period for a householder case. We stay on the file through the officer's queries rather than handing it over at submission.
SE20 is Bromley's for practical purposes: 99.7% of the district's recorded property sales fall inside the borough, so Bromley Council decides very nearly every application here. The borough operates no Article 4 direction at all. The three designated areas inside the district — Alexandra Cottages, Penge High Street and Crystal Palace Park — each pull a scheme into full planning with a heritage statement. We pin the route to the exact address before a price is quoted.
Almost always. The moment a scheme involves foundations, steelwork, a loft floor or a new opening cut through a wall, building control has to approve it, and what gets examined is the structure (Part A), the escape route (Part B) and the insulation (Part L). It goes to Bromley's building control team or to a private approver; the role is now formally a registered building control approver, though most people still say approved inspector. On terraced and semi-detached streets like these, the neighbours will normally need serving with a party wall notice before the steelwork arrives. The Complete package covers both.
In value terms it usually is, though not by the margin some sites imply. The measurable figure for this district is the 2025 median sale price of £420,000, on 294 transactions in the Land Registry's price-paid file. Against that, a well-drawn extension or loft is a modest proportion of the asset. Getting it wrong the other way is what costs money: work put up without consent, or never signed off by building control. That surfaces when the house is sold, and unpicking it costs multiples of whatever was saved.
Working across a borough boundary, or unsure which council will decide your application? Every service we offer is listed for SE9, SE12, SE26, BR1, BR2, BR3, BR6 and BR7.
Pick a slot that suits you. No obligation and no sales pressure, just straight answers on your planning route.
What sits in this part of south-east London, the housing that characterises each pocket, and who determines an application from that address. The fee figures are 2026 statutory England charges levied by the council, not our survey or drawing prices.
| Postcode | Area | Dominant stock | What it means for a measured building survey |
|---|---|---|---|
| SE20 | Anerley / Penge | Victorian and Edwardian terraces | Almost all of SE20 is Bromley's — 99.7% of the district's recorded sales are inside the borough — but the Croydon boundary runs close enough at the western edge that we check the address against both policies maps rather than assume. |
| SE20 | Penge | Victorian and Edwardian terraces | Penge falls inside SE20 and inside Bromley, so the council determines proposals arising from a survey there under its own Local Plan. |
| BR1 | Bromley / Bickley | Victorian terraces, Edwardian villas, post-war flats | Adjoining district to SE20. Surveying needs no consent here either — Bromley has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| BR2 | Hayes / Keston | Victorian terraces, Edwardian villas, post-war flats | Adjoining district to SE20. Surveying needs no consent here either — Bromley has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| BR3 | Beckenham | Edwardian villas, 1930s semi-detached | Adjoining district to SE20. Surveying needs no consent here either — Bromley has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| SE19 | Upper Norwood / Crystal Palace | Victorian villas, Edwardian terraces | Adjoining district to SE20. Surveying needs no consent here either — Croydon has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| SE25 | South Norwood / Selhurst | Victorian terraces | Adjoining district to SE20. Surveying needs no consent here either — Croydon has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| CR0 | Croydon / Addiscombe / Shirley | Edwardian terraces, post-war flats | Adjoining district to SE20. Surveying needs no consent here either — Croydon has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
| CR2 | South Croydon | mixed stock | Adjoining district to SE20. Surveying needs no consent here either — Croydon has no say in it, and the survey is the same record whichever side of the line the property sits. |
Two streets in Penge can carry entirely different roof pitches and wall construction, and the depth of the back plot varies more still. All three place a ceiling on what can sensibly be drawn for a given house.
Designations in Bromley: 48 areas are designated across the borough, Keston, Bickley and Bromley Town among them, and three of them fall inside this district — Alexandra Cottages, Penge High Street and Crystal Palace Park. Where one applies, the £249 six-week prior approval route closes; what gets submitted instead is a £548 householder application against an eight-week determination period, heritage statement included.
Article 4 across Bromley: the council has never made one covering the whole borough, which leaves permitted development rights intact at SE20 addresses outside a designated area or a listed curtilage. Recording it on a £274 certificate of lawfulness is what protects an owner years afterwards, when a buyer's solicitor asks what authorised the work.
The building fabric around SE20 (Anerley / Penge): Large 1930s detached and semi-detached in Chislehurst and Bickley; Edwardian in Beckenham; Victorian in Bromley town; Metropolitan Green Belt covers significant rural-fringe land. Largest London borough by area; substantial Green Belt; conservation areas in most town centres; generally permissive elsewhere. A measured building survey in SE20 (Anerley / Penge) 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 Bromley Council.
Designations beyond the district: Croydon lists 24 conservation areas, Purley, Shirley Park and South Norwood among them, and Old Coulsdon is the one that most often reshapes a design there. None of those touch SE20 — they matter only if the address turns out to sit over the boundary, in which case designation removes the permitted-development route: the scheme is then a £548 householder application taking eight weeks, and the £249 prior approval alternative, six weeks long, is no longer available.
The Croydon fringe: a small number of addresses at the south-western edge of the district fall the other side of the borough boundary and are Croydon's to determine. Croydon has no Article 4 direction across its whole area either, so on rights the position is broadly similar. The local policies, the validation checklist and the case officer are not. Establish which council owns the address before assuming either.
What SE20 is built of: Victorian villas and Edwardian terraces through Penge and Anerley, mansion blocks and post-war pockets nearer the park, and very little that post-dates the 1960s. Borough-wide the pattern is suburban and low-density: 49.3% of Bromley's land is built up, the lowest share in London, with Green Belt over much of the remainder. That stock is what a survey is scoped against, because it decides whether the scheme proceeds under permitted development, gets recorded by a £274 certificate of lawfulness, or needs a £548 application to Bromley Council. It also explains the borough's decision pattern — householder cases were refused at 20.2% over the three years to March 2026, 950 refusals from 4,706, while minor development was refused at 34.2%, 536 from 1,568. The same building, described the wrong way on the form, meets a materially tougher test. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0
Sources for this SE20 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.
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