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How to tell which report your council wants

A valid planning application needs a completed form, the correct fee, compliance with national information requirements and provision of local information requirements. Reports sit in the last two. The national requirements are the same in every English council: plans and drawings, an ownership certificate and agricultural land declaration, and for some applications a Design and Access Statement or a fire statement.

Everything else is local. Each council may add to the national list through a local list of information requirements. The planning practice guidance says those requirements must be specified on a formally adopted local list published on the council's website less than 2 years before the application is submitted, and that local requirements have no bearing on whether a planning application is valid unless they are set out on such a list. So a report that is not on your council's current list cannot be a reason to refuse to register your application, however useful it would be.

The practical step is short. Search your council's website for its 'validation requirements' or 'local list', check the publication date, and look for your type of project. If the page is old, or the list is vague, a planning constraints report is a quick first step, and a pre-application request gets the planning officer to say in writing what they expect. You can also send us the list: we will tell you which of the reports on this page it is asking for.

Which is which: four pairs people mix up

Fire statement or fire strategy? The Development Management Procedure Order 2015 requires a fire statement with a planning application only where the building contains two or more dwellings (or educational accommodation) and is 18 metres or 7 storeys, as article 9A sets out. Most London homes are far below that. For them the planning question is London Plan policy D12, which our fire safety statement answers. A fire strategy plan is a different document altogether: building regulations drawings showing escape, warning and compartmentation in a loft, conversion or flat.

Regularisation or retrospective planning? They answer different questions, and work done without either approval may need both. Regularisation is the building regulations remedy: it applies to unauthorised work carried out on or after 11th November 1985, and the additional work is measured against the requirements applicable to that work when it was carried out. A retrospective planning application asks the council to grant permission for what is already built. If the work is old enough, a certificate of lawful existing use may settle the planning side instead, because operations in England are now immune from enforcement after ten years from substantial completion for work finished since 25 April 2024.

Flood risk assessment or SuDS statement? A flood risk assessment is about the risk to your site, from rivers, the sea, surface water and groundwater, and what the design does about it. A SuDS drainage statement is about what your development does to rainwater: where it goes now, where it will go, and how the drainage is looked after. A site in a flood zone often needs the first; most new buildings and larger extensions need the second.

Preliminary ecological appraisal or biodiversity net gain? The appraisal is an ecologist's records check and walkover that says which habitats and species your site holds and whether a protected-species survey comes next, such as a bat survey. Biodiversity net gain is the habitat-unit calculation and gain plan. They can draw on the same site visit, and we check first whether your site is exempt from net gain.

Surveys, party wall and specialist reports

Almost every drawing we make starts from a measured building survey. If the job is only a set of plans for a sale or a letting, floor plans are the shorter route. Where the work touches a shared wall, the boundary or a neighbour's foundations, party wall notices come before the builder starts; the party wall services page explains the Act and the rest of that family.

Our own team prepares the specialist reports alongside your drawings: daylight and sunlight, trees, bats, energy and transport. Where the law needs a licensed person, for example a bat survey licence, the page says so and we arrange that person inside the fixed fee. A construction management plan is written up on our sister site, Drawings4Planning.