Rear extension drawings for homes in Sutton
If you are planning a rear extension in Sutton, you need drawings that match the route you take: a householder planning application, a prior approval, or a design kept inside permitted development. We prepare the survey and the planning or permitted development drawings for a published fixed fee, starting from £695 with no VAT to add.
Fixed fee from £495 drawings + £200 survey (£695 total) · all prices
Prefer to talk it through?
What a rear extension in Sutton starts with
Every route begins with an accurate drawing of the house as it stands. We measure the rear elevation, the garden depth and the window and door positions, then draw the existing plans and elevations that the new work is shown against. Sutton's validation team, like any council's, cannot register an application whose existing drawings do not agree with the proposed ones.
From there we draw the proposed ground floor, the rear and side elevations, a section through the new roof and a block plan showing how far the extension reaches into the garden. The starting fee for that set is £695, from our published price list, and it covers the survey as well as the drawings.
How far can a single-storey rear extension go without an application?
Under permitted development, a single-storey extension to a house other than a detached one may extend up to 3 metres beyond the rear wall of the original house (the householder rules in the General Permitted Development Order). That is measured from the original rear wall, so an earlier extension by a previous owner counts against you.
If your plans are deeper, the order allows up to 6 metres beyond the original rear wall for a house other than a detached one, but only through the larger home extension prior approval process. That is a neighbour-consultation process, not a free pass, and it needs its own drawings.
Over the same period, 95% of Sutton's householder decisions, leaving prior approvals aside, were made within eight weeks.
What Sutton's larger home extension figures show
Prior approval for a larger home extension is where Sutton's record is most useful to a homeowner who wants more depth. Sutton determined 98 larger home extension prior approvals in the Government's planning statistics, and 24% of them were granted.
We read that as a sign that the deeper route needs care, not as a reason to avoid it. Neighbours are consulted on these, so we draw the extension in relation to the boundary and the neighbouring windows from the start, and we will tell you plainly if a shallower scheme or a householder application suits your plot better.
When a householder application is the better route
A householder application takes in anything permitted development will not: a deeper rear extension, a higher roof, a design that wraps round the side, or a house whose permitted development rights have been removed. The council's fee for a householder application is £548, and it is paid to Sutton directly, not to us.
In the latest year of the Government's figures, Sutton decided 601 householder applications and granted 92% of them. Those are all householder decisions across the borough, so they describe the council's overall pattern and say nothing certain about your own house. We do not promise an outcome on any application.
How quickly Sutton decides householder applications
Over the same period, 95% of Sutton's householder decisions, leaving prior approvals aside, were made within eight weeks. For planning your build, that means the council side of a householder application is usually quick once it is registered.
We aim to hand over a set that validates first time, so the clock starts when you submit and not after a request for missing information.
Conservation areas and appeals in Sutton
Sutton has 15 live conservation areas in the Planning Data Platform. If your house is inside one, a rear extension may still be possible, but materials, roof form and anything seen from the street matter more, and the drawings need to show them. Check the council's map for your road before you settle a design.
When a refusal is appealed, the Planning Inspectorate's database records 139 householder decisions for Sutton, with 41% of them allowed. An appeal is slow and uncertain, so it is better to get the design and the drawings right first time than to count on one.
Rear, side return and wraparound: which drawings do you need?
A plain rear extension pushes straight out from the back wall. If you also want to fill the side alley of a terrace or semi-detached house, that is a side return extension, and a rear plus side return together is a wraparound. Each has its own page on this site, and the drawing set grows with the complexity.
Tell us what you have in mind and we will say which of the three it is, which route fits it, and what the fixed fee will be before you commit to anything.
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 |
| 601 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS2 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 92% | 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 |
| 139 | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 41% | Our analysis of Planning Inspectorate Casework Database (released 1 Oct 2026 (Casework Database 2609)) | www.gov.uk |
| 15 | 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 |
| 98 | Our analysis of MHCLG planning application statistics, table PS1 (district open data table) (released 24 Sep 2026, quarters to 2026 Q2) | www.gov.uk |
| 24% | 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 |
Photographs: Christopher Hilton (CC BY-SA 2.0).
