House extension drawings in West Norwood, SE27
A house extension in West Norwood is drawn and submitted to Lambeth, and our fixed fee for a single-storey rear extension starts from £695 with no VAT to add. Whether the drawings go in as a householder application or a permitted development route depends on how far you build past the back of the house, and the sections below set out the limits and Lambeth's own record.
Fixed fee from £495 drawings + £200 survey (£695 total) · all prices
Prefer to talk it through?
What a West Norwood extension needs before Lambeth will look at it
Lambeth is the council that decides a house extension in SE27. It will not assess an idea on a napkin. Whichever route you take, the officer needs measured existing plans and elevations, proposed plans and elevations, and a site plan that shows the extension against your boundaries.
Our starting fixed fee for single-storey rear extension drawings is £695 with no VAT to add. That covers the survey of the existing house and the planning or permitted development drawings, and it is taken from our published price list rather than quoted after a form. A bigger or more complicated scheme can cost more, which is why the figure is a starting point.
How far can you extend at the back without a full application?
The General Permitted Development Order lets a house that is not detached extend a single storey beyond the original rear wall by up to 3 metres without applying for planning permission in the usual way. That covers many of the terraced and semi-detached houses around SE27.
Go further and the larger home extension prior approval process applies. For a house other than detached the limit under that process is up to 6 metres beyond the original rear wall. Prior approval is not a free pass: Lambeth consults the neighbours and can refuse if the impact on them is unacceptable.
Two cautions. The distances are measured from the original house, not from whatever a previous owner has already added. And these rights are narrower, or removed, in some situations, so check the position of your own property before you rely on them.
Lambeth granted 49% of the larger home extension prior approvals it determined since the third quarter of 2024.
How Lambeth has treated householder applications
In the year to the second quarter of 2026, Lambeth decided 595 householder applications, counting prior approvals as well. Of those, 83% were granted. That is a measure of the council's behaviour across the borough, not a promise about your house, because each proposal is judged on its own drawings and its own neighbours.
On timing, 94% of householder decisions, excluding prior approvals, were made within the standard householder timeframe. A complete, correctly scaled set of drawings is what keeps an application from stalling at the validation stage, before that clock even starts.
Appeals: where Lambeth refusals have been overturned
Between 2021 and 2026 the Planning Inspectorate decided 220 householder appeals against Lambeth, and 34% were allowed. So most refusals that went to appeal were upheld, but a meaningful minority were overturned.
We read that as a reason to design carefully rather than to plan on appealing. A scheme that respects the neighbours' light and outlook, and the character of the street, avoids the refusal in the first place. An appeal costs months, and the drawings you start with are the ones the Inspector sees.
Conservation areas and the larger home extension route
Lambeth has 65 live conservation areas. If your house stands in one, the council weighs how an extension looks from the street and how it affects the area's character, and the detail of the elevations and materials matters more.
Lambeth granted 49% of the larger home extension prior approvals it determined since the third quarter of 2024. Roughly half going through shows that the 6 metre route is real but not automatic, and that the neighbour consultation does bite. If you want a deep single-storey extension, we will tell you before you spend on drawings whether the 3 metre limit or the prior approval route fits.
What the council charges and what we charge
Lambeth's fee for a householder application to enlarge, improve or alter a single dwellinghouse is £548 from 1 April 2026. That is the council's charge, paid to the council, and it is separate from our drawing fee.
Our price is published, not hidden behind a call-back, so you can add the two figures and see the cost of getting a West Norwood extension in front of Lambeth. Building Regulations drawings are a separate stage, because planning approval does not replace them.
Sources
Every figure on this page, where it comes from and a link to the original.
| Figure | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
| £695 | DrawingsDirect starting fixed fee for single-storey rear extension drawings (survey and planning or permitted development drawings), with no VAT to add, from the published price list | drawingsdirect.co.uk |
| 3 metres | GPDO 2015 Sch 2 Pt 1 Class A.1(f)(i): a single-storey rear extension may extend beyond the rear wall of the original house by up to 3 metres, house other than detached (source wording: 3 metres) | www.legislation.gov.uk |
| 6 metres | GPDO 2015 Sch 2 Pt 1 Class A.1(g): larger home extension under the prior approval process (A.4), house other than detached, up to 6 metres beyond the original rear wall (source wording: 6 metres) | www.legislation.gov.uk |
| 595 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 83% | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 94% | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 220 | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 34% | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 65 | Our analysis of MHCLG Planning Data Platform conservation-area and article-4-direction datasets (bulk snapshot retrieved 14 Aug 2026) | www.planning.data.gov.uk |
| 49% | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS1 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| £548 | Fees for planning applications in England from 1 April 2026 (MHCLG, SI 2012/2920 as annually indexed), category 6(1): householder application for the enlargement, improvement or alteration of a single dwellinghouse (source wording: £548) | assets.publishing.service.gov.uk |