Lawful development certificate drawings in Croydon
A lawful development certificate is a council's written confirmation that work is lawful without a planning application. DrawingsDirect prepares the drawings and the submission for Croydon homes from £645, a fixed fee. Croydon's own fee is £274 for a householder proposal, from 1 April 2026.
Fixed fee from £445 drawings + £200 survey (£645 total) · all prices
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What a certificate gives you
Permitted development lets you build some things without applying for planning permission, but it leaves you without paper to show for it. A certificate is the paper: the council examines your drawings against the rules and confirms the result in writing. It is optional; owners often seek one before building or when selling, since a buyer's solicitor may ask for evidence that past work was lawful.
Our guide on whether you need a lawful development certificate helps you decide, and the lawful development certificate drawings service explains what we prepare.
The 3 metre test, and why measurement decides it
For a house that is not detached, the permitted development rules allow a single-storey rear extension to extend up to 3 metres beyond the rear wall of the original house (GPDO 2015, Schedule 2, Part 1, Class A.1(f)(i)). The council can only certify what the drawings let it measure, so the plans have to show the original rear wall and the depth from it, not just the finished room.
That is easy to get wrong where earlier alterations have blurred the original line. If the existing plans are unreliable, a measured building survey in Croydon gives the certificate drawings a sound base. The rules are on legislation.gov.uk.
The council's fee for a certificate for a proposed use or operation is half the full application fee, so for a householder project it is £274, half of £548, from 1 April 2026.
How busy Croydon is with certificates
In the eight quarters 2024 Q3 to 2026 Q2 Croydon decided 1,005 certificates of lawful development (our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS1). That is a steady flow of certificate drawings for one planning team to check.
Over the four quarters 2025 Q3 to 2026 Q2 Croydon decided 786 householder applications, including prior approvals, and granted 87% of them. Excluding prior approvals, 95% of its householder decisions were made within 8 weeks (our analysis of table PS2). Those are householder applications rather than certificates, but they show how the same team works.
Appeals, conservation areas and Article 4
If a householder application is refused, the appeal record is one thing to look at: our analysis of the Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026, Casework Database 2609) counts 287 Croydon householder appeals decided for 2021 to 2026, with 39% allowed. It describes the past and does not predict your result.
Our analysis of the MHCLG Planning Data Platform datasets (bulk snapshot retrieved 14 Aug 2026) counts 20 live conservation-area entries on the national register for Croydon. The register may be incomplete, so check Croydon's own conservation area map. An Article 4 direction can take a right out of permitted development, and a certificate cannot restore it; see our Article 4 explainer.
Our fee against the council's
Our fixed fee for lawful development certificate drawings and the certificate submission starts at £645. The council's fee for a certificate for a proposed use or operation is half the full application fee, so for a householder project it is £274, half of £548, from 1 April 2026.
Croydon's requests for amended drawings are redrawn at no extra charge. We are chartered architectural technologists (MCIAT), and the full list of our fees is on the pricing page.
Sources
Every figure on this page, where it comes from and a link to the original.
| Figure | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
| £645 | DrawingsDirect starting fixed fee for Lawful Development Certificate drawings and certificate submission, from the published price list | drawingsdirect.co.uk |
| £274 | Fees for planning applications in England from 1 April 2026 (MHCLG, SI 2012/2920 as annually indexed): certificate of lawful development for a proposed use or operation is half the full application fee; for a householder project that is half of £548 (source wording: "Half the Full Application fee"; the £274 is our arithmetic) | assets.publishing.service.gov.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 |
| 786 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 87% | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 95% | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 287 | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 39% | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 20 | 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 |
| 1,005 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS1 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
Questions people ask
Do I have to get a lawful development certificate in Croydon?
How much is a certificate in Croydon?
How deep can a rear extension be under permitted development?
Photographs: Dr Neil Clifton (CC BY-SA 2.0).
