Architects in Surrey — chartered drawings, fixed fees

Which council decides your Surrey application?

Surrey County Council is not your planning authority for domestic work. Householder applications are decided by one of eleven district and borough councils: Elmbridge, Epsom and Ewell, Guildford, Mole Valley, Reigate and Banstead, Runnymede, Spelthorne, Surrey Heath, Tandridge, Waverley and Woking. Each publishes its own Local Plan, its own householder design guidance and its own local validation list, so the supporting documents required differ across a county boundary that is sometimes a single road.

Statutory fees do not vary: £258 for a householder application, £578 for a full application, £129 for a Lawful Development Certificate. What varies is what the council will accept, and how long registration takes.

How does the Green Belt change what you can build?

Roughly three-quarters of Surrey lies within the Metropolitan Green Belt. Inside it, an extension is assessed against whether it constitutes a disproportionate addition over and above the size of the original dwelling — the house as first built, or as it stood on 1 July 1948. Previous owners’ extensions count against you, which is why the planning history of the address is the first thing we pull.

Districts interpret ‘disproportionate’ through their own policies, commonly expressed as a percentage uplift in floor area or volume over the original. A scheme that would be unremarkable in a town centre can fail on that test alone, and the usual remedy is to reduce the footprint, put the extra space into the roof, or replace rather than extend.

Layered on top of the Green Belt is the Surrey Hills National Landscape — the designation formerly known as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty — covering large parts of Mole Valley, Waverley, Guildford and Tandridge. Within it, and within its setting, schemes face a landscape and visual test on materials, roof form and prominence that goes well beyond ordinary householder design policy.

What kind of work do we do across Surrey?

• Rear and side extensions on the interwar and post-war stock of Epsom and Ewell, Spelthorne and Runnymede, where plots are generous and permitted development frequently applies.
• Loft conversions and hip-to-gable schemes on the semi-detached suburbs of Woking, Camberley and Redhill.
• Replacement dwellings in Elmbridge and Waverley, where a tired post-war bungalow on a large Green Belt plot is often better replaced than extended — subject to the volume tests the district applies.
• Annexes and outbuildings, where the key question is whether the accommodation is genuinely ancillary to the main house or constitutes a separate dwelling, which in the Green Belt is a very different application.
• Barn and outbuilding conversions under Class Q and related permitted development rights, which are unavailable inside the National Landscape.

Surrey planning questions