Planning permission in Croydon: the validation checklist
A Croydon householder application is validated when it arrives with the right forms, drawings, ownership certificate and fee; until then the clock does not start. The national fee for a householder application is £548, and the council has 8 weeks to decide once the application is valid.
Fixed fee from £545 drawings + £200 survey (£745 total) · all prices
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What validation means in Croydon
Validation is the council's first look at your application. A planning officer is not judging your design at this stage. They are checking that the paperwork is complete enough to be registered. Until Croydon registers the application as valid, nothing else happens: no neighbour consultation, no case officer, and no decision period running.
That is why the checklist matters more than most homeowners expect. An application that arrives with a missing plan or the wrong fee is returned or held as invalid, and the weeks you spent waiting are lost. Getting the pack right the first time is the cheapest way to save time.
The checklist for a householder application
Nationally, a householder application needs the same core items in every borough: the completed application form, a location plan with the site outlined in red, a block plan showing the house and its boundaries, and existing and proposed floor plans and elevations. Where the work changes roof height, a section drawing is usually expected as well. Ownership has to be declared on the correct certificate, and the fee has to be paid with the submission.
On top of that national list, each council publishes its own local validation list. Croydon keeps one, and it can ask for extra documents where your site or proposal calls for them, for example information about trees, drainage or a heritage setting. Read the current local list before you submit, because councils update them and the council's version is the one that counts.
Drawings must be to a recognised metric scale, carry a scale bar, and show north on the plans. A hand sketch or a screenshot of a map will not pass. This is the part the step owners most often get wrong when they prepare an application themselves.
Over the latest four quarters of government statistics, Croydon made 786 householder decisions, of which 87% were granted.
The fee you pay Croydon
The fee for a householder application to enlarge, improve or alter a single dwellinghouse is £548. It is set nationally, not by Croydon, and it is paid to the council with the application. We never add to it or bundle it into our own price, and we show it separately so you can see exactly what goes to the council.
Our own fixed fee for householder planning drawings starts at £745 with no VAT to add. That covers the survey, drawings, design statement and submission. The full price list is published on our pricing page.
Do you need a Design and Access Statement?
For most householder extensions and lofts, no. Government guidance says a Design and Access Statement is required for major development, some development in conservation areas and World Heritage Sites, and listed building consent applications. If your house sits in a conservation area, check whether your proposal triggers it rather than assuming either way.
Croydon has 20 live conservation areas on the national planning data platform. If your street is inside one, expect the council to look harder at materials, roof form and the front of the house, and expect the checklist to be longer. You can check your address on the council's constraints map before you commission any drawings.
How Croydon decides householder applications
Over the latest four quarters of government statistics, Croydon made 786 householder decisions, of which 87% were granted. Across all types of application it made 1,576 decisions in the same period. These are past results across many different houses and designs. They describe how the borough has behaved, and they do not predict what will happen to your own application.
On timing, 95% of householder decisions, excluding prior approvals, were made within 8 weeks. The statutory decision period for an application that is not major development is 8 weeks beginning with the day after the council receives it, so the number matters most if the clock actually started. An invalid application never starts it.
If Croydon refuses: appeals
A refusal can be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate. Its casework database shows that over recent years 287 householder appeals against Croydon decisions were decided, and 39% of them were allowed. Across every type of appeal the allowed share was 25%.
The householder figure is higher, which is a reminder that a first decision is not always the last word. It is still a slow route compared with getting the application right in the first place, and an appeal is a separate piece of work. A good application, with drawings that answer the council's likely objections before they are raised, is the better plan.
Where we fit in
We prepare the survey, the drawings, the design statement where one is needed and the submission pack, checked against the validation list before it goes in. We do not promise an outcome, because the decision belongs to the council. What we do is make sure that the application reaches a case officer as a valid, complete one.
Sources
Every figure on this page, where it comes from and a link to the original.
| Figure | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
| £745 | DrawingsDirect starting fixed fee for householder planning drawings (survey, drawings, design statement, submission), with no VAT to add, from the published price list | drawingsdirect.co.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 |
| Design and Access Statement | Planning practice guidance, Making an application, paragraph 030: a Design and Access Statement is required for major development, some development in conservation areas and World Heritage Sites, and listed building consent applications | www.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 |
| 1,576 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 25% | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 8 weeks | DMPO 2015 art 34(2)(b): decision period for an application that is not major development (source wording: "8 weeks beginning with the day immediately following that on which the application is received") | www.legislation.gov.uk |
Photographs: Dr Neil Clifton (CC BY-SA 2.0).
