Measured building surveys in Monken Hadley, EN5
A measured building survey in Monken Hadley records your house as it stands today and gives you scaled existing plans. DrawingsDirect's laser-measured survey with existing plans starts at £200 with no VAT to add, and the plans it produces are the base every Barnet planning drawing is drawn on.
Fixed fee from £200 · all prices
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What you get from a measured survey of a Monken Hadley house
A measured building survey is a set of accurate drawings of the building as it is now, not as it was designed. Walls, openings, floor-to-floor heights and the shape of the roof are measured on site with a laser and drawn up as existing plans. The published price list quotes a starting fee of £200 for a laser-measured building survey with existing plans, with no VAT to add.
Many owners in Monken Hadley find that no reliable plans exist, or that the ones they hold are a sketch from an earlier extension. A fresh survey replaces guesswork with measurements you can hand to a designer, a builder or the council.
Why Barnet cares about the scale of your drawings
Monken Hadley sits in the London Borough of Barnet, so a planning application for your house goes to Barnet. National planning practice guidance says plans and drawings must be drawn to an identified scale, and that plans must show the direction of north. A measured survey is how those scaled plans get produced in the first place.
The same guidance says a location plan should typically be at a scale of 1:1250. A survey of the house itself is separate from that site-level plan, but the two have to agree, so the building outline on your survey is checked against the red line before anything is issued.
Barnet has 16 live conservation-area entries on the national planning data platform.
How busy Barnet's householder planning desk is
Barnet decided 1,361 householder applications in the latest four quarters of government statistics, counting prior approvals. Of those, 80% were granted. That is the council's overall record, not a forecast for your house, and it says nothing about any one street.
Speed matters when you are planning around a builder's diary. For householder decisions excluding prior approvals, 95% were decided within eight weeks. The figures come from our analysis of the national planning application statistics, and a good set of existing plans is one of the things that keeps an application from stalling at validation.
What happens when a Barnet householder refusal is appealed
Over recent years the Planning Inspectorate decided 494 householder appeals in Barnet, and 51% of them were allowed. In plain terms, about half of the householder refusals that reached the Inspectorate were overturned.
That does not mean a refusal is worth chasing. An appeal costs time and usually turns on the quality of the drawings and the design case. Accurate existing plans avoid an argument about what is already on the ground.
Conservation areas and the survey you commission
Barnet has 16 live conservation-area entries on the national planning data platform. Whether your own house sits inside one is a question for the council's map, and it changes how detailed your drawings need to be: more of the existing frontage, windows and boundary treatment tends to be asked for.
If you suspect your road is inside a designated area, say so when you book. We can record the front elevation and roof edges at the level of detail a conservation officer is likely to want, rather than coming back for a second visit.
When a survey leads to a lawful development certificate
Many owners in this part of Barnet commission a survey because they want to confirm that a loft, outbuilding or extension is lawful before selling or building further. Barnet decided 1,619 certificates of lawful development in the latest eight quarters of national figures, so it is a well-used route.
A certificate application needs plans that show what exists, which is exactly what the survey produces. If the survey shows something that needs permission, you learn that before you spend money on design.
Booking a survey and what to have ready
Send your EN5 address, a note of any extensions you know about and whether the loft or basement needs to be included. Access to every room, the roof void if there is one, and the garden is what makes a survey complete in a single visit.
Fees are fixed and published, and the starting price is £200 with no VAT to add. Use the quote form with your address and we will confirm the scope in writing before any work starts.
Sources
Every figure on this page, where it comes from and a link to the original.
| Figure | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
| £200 | DrawingsDirect starting fixed fee for a laser-measured building survey with existing plans, with no VAT to add, from the published price list | drawingsdirect.co.uk |
| identified scale | Planning practice guidance, Making an application, paragraph 023: plans and drawings must be drawn to an identified scale and plans must show the direction of north (source wording: "must be drawn to an identified scale") | www.gov.uk |
| 1:1250 | Planning practice guidance, Making an application, paragraph 024: a location plan should typically be at a scale of 1:1250 or 1:2500 (source wording: "The scale should typically be 1:1250 or 1:2500") | www.gov.uk |
| 1,361 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 80% | 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 |
| 494 | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 51% | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 16 | 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 |
| 1,619 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS1 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |