Design and Access Statement Cost in Bromley

A design and access statement is a written document that accompanies certain planning and listed building applications and explains, in a structured way, the thinking behind the design and how people will access and use the finished development. The planning system's own description is a good one: a DAS is a short report that illustrates the process which led to a development proposal, and explains and justifies that proposal in a way the council, consultees and the public can follow. It is not a technical drawing, a form, or a statement of fact about the site; it is an argument — a reasoned case that the design is a good one and that it responds properly to its context and to planning policy.

The 'design' half of the statement covers how the scheme has been shaped: how you read the character of the area, the constraints and opportunities of the site, and how those led to decisions about the amount of development, its layout, its scale, its appearance and its landscaping. The 'access' half covers how people will get to and move through the development, with particular attention to inclusive design — making sure disabled people, older people, families with pushchairs and everyone else can use the building and its surroundings on equal terms. Together, the two halves are meant to demonstrate that access and inclusion were designed in from the start rather than bolted on at the end.

Crucially, a DAS is a justification document, not a description. A weak statement simply narrates what the drawings show — 'the proposal is a two-storey rear extension in brick with a slate roof'. A strong statement explains why: why that form, why those materials, why that position, and how each decision responds to the site's context and to the council's design and heritage policies. The difference between the two is precisely the difference between a document that helps win permission and one that adds nothing. It is also, in large part, what the cost of a DAS reflects — the analysis and reasoning, not the word count.

For that reason, the best and most economical design and access statements are written by the people who designed the scheme, because the reasoning in the statement should be the same reasoning that drove the design. When a DAS is commissioned separately, after the event, from someone who was not involved in the design, it tends to cost more, take longer and read as a retrofitted justification — and case officers can tell. At Crown Architecture we write the DAS as an integral part of the design service, which is why our clients are rarely paying for it as a large, separate line item.

Not every application needs a design and access statement, and one of the first cost questions is simply whether yours does. The requirement is set out in Article 9 of the Town and Country Planning (Development Management Procedure) (England) Order 2015 — the 'DMPO' — for planning applications, and in the separate listed building consent rules for heritage applications. The current thresholds have applied since 25 June 2013, when the requirement was significantly narrowed from its original 2006 form, and they are the same across England, including in Bromley.

For ordinary planning applications, a DAS is required for 'major development'. In residential terms, major development means the provision of ten or more dwellings, or a site of half a hectare or more where the number of dwellings is not yet known, or the creation of 1,000 square metres or more of floor space. So a large new-build housing scheme, a block of flats, or a substantial development plainly needs a DAS; a single house extension, in most of the borough, does not.

There is, however, an important additional trigger that catches many Bromley projects: development in a 'designated area'. Where a site lies within a conservation area (or a World Heritage Site), a design and access statement is required even for much smaller schemes — specifically, for the provision of one or more dwellings, or for a building or buildings with 100 square metres or more of floor space. Because Bromley has more than forty conservation areas covering large parts of the borough, this lower threshold applies to a great many applications here that would not need a DAS elsewhere. A new house, or a sizeable extension of 100 square metres or more, within a Bromley conservation area will generally need one.

The third trigger is heritage: an application for listed building consent must be accompanied by a design and access statement, whatever its size. Bromley has a substantial stock of listed buildings, from grand houses to modest cottages and structures, and any works to a listed building that need consent will require a DAS as a matter of course. So the three questions that decide whether your Bromley project needs a DAS are: is it major development; is it in a conservation area and above the 100 square metre / one-dwelling threshold; and does it involve listed building consent? If the answer to any is yes, you need one.

Let us deal with the headline figure first, with the important caveat that a DAS is a professional document and not a fixed-price product. When a design and access statement is commissioned as a standalone piece of writing — separate from the design work — it typically costs somewhere between roughly £300 and £2,000 in the UK, with most straightforward domestic and small commercial statements landing in the lower half of that band and larger or more sensitive schemes at the top or beyond. That range is a genuine market reality rather than a precise quote, and where your project sits within it depends on the drivers set out later on this page.

For the smallest qualifying projects — say a modest extension or a single dwelling in a conservation area where the design is straightforward and the context is well understood — a proportionate DAS can be a few hundred pounds of work. For a listed building, where the statement has to engage carefully with the building's significance and justify the impact of the works, the figure is usually higher, because the analysis is more demanding and the consequences of getting it wrong are more serious. For major development — a housing scheme or a block of flats — a DAS is a substantial document that may run to many pages, address masterplanning, inclusive access strategy and landscaping in depth, and cost well into four figures.

The most important point about cost, though, is that a design and access statement is very often not a separate line item at all. When you are already paying an architect or designer to prepare the scheme and the application drawings, the DAS is usually written as part of that service, drawing directly on the design analysis that has already been done. In that model the marginal cost of the statement is modest, because the thinking behind it is the same thinking that produced the design. It is when a DAS is bolted on afterwards, by someone who has to reverse-engineer the reasoning from finished drawings, that it becomes disproportionately expensive and slow.

So the realistic way to budget for a DAS is not to price it in isolation but to ask how it fits into the overall cost of getting your Bromley application ready. At Crown Architecture we quote a clear fixed fee for the design and application work, and the design and access statement is prepared within that as an integral part of the submission — not as a surprise extra. Where a client comes to us needing only a DAS for a scheme designed elsewhere, we price that transparently against the size and sensitivity of the project, and we tell you honestly at the outset roughly where in the range it will fall.

The cost of a DAS is really the cost of producing its content properly, so it helps to know exactly what has to be in one. The DMPO sets out the required scope, and good practice — flowing from the original CABE guidance of 2006 and refined since — fleshes it out. A design and access statement has to demonstrate the steps taken to appraise the context of the site, explain how the design takes that context into account, set out the policy on access and how it responds to relevant access policies, describe any consultation undertaken on access, and explain how any issues affecting access to the development have been addressed.

In practice, a well-structured DAS works through a recognised set of design components. It explains the 'amount' of development — for housing, the number of units; for other uses, the floor space — and how that quantum suits the site. It explains the 'layout' — how buildings, routes and open spaces are arranged and orientated in relation to one another and to their surroundings. It explains the 'scale' — the height, width and massing of the buildings, why those dimensions were chosen, and how they relate to the surrounding townscape and the human scale of entrances and facades.

It also explains 'appearance' — the materials, detailing, colour and character of the buildings, and how they relate to and enhance the surroundings — and 'landscaping' — the treatment of the spaces around the buildings, both hard and soft, and how it will be maintained. Running through all of this is the context appraisal: the reading of the site's physical, social and planning context that justifies every one of those decisions. A statement that simply asserts choices without grounding them in context is a weak one; a statement that shows each decision flowing from a genuine reading of the place is a strong one.

The 'access' half of the statement then explains how everyone will reach and use the development. This covers vehicular and pedestrian access, connections to public transport, and — at its heart — inclusive design: how the scheme ensures that disabled people, and everyone else, can approach, enter and move around the buildings and spaces on equal and convenient terms. On a listed building or in a conservation area, the statement additionally has to grapple with heritage, explaining the significance of what is there and justifying the impact of the proposal on it. The more of these components a project engages, and the more sensitive the context, the more work the statement takes — which is precisely where the cost comes from.

Because a design and access statement is priced on the work involved rather than by a tariff, it is worth being specific about what actually drives that work up or down. The single biggest factor is the scale and complexity of the scheme. A statement for a single dwelling or an extension addresses a handful of design components on a compact site; a statement for a housing development has to deal with masterplanning, the relationship between many buildings, movement and access across a site, landscaping strategy and phasing. The larger and more multi-layered the project, the longer and more expensive the statement.

The second big driver is heritage sensitivity, and this is where Bromley's particular character bites. A scheme touching a listed building, or sitting within one of the borough's conservation areas, requires the statement to engage seriously with heritage significance — to identify what makes the asset or the area special, and to justify the proposal's effect on it against national and local policy. That heritage analysis is skilled, evidence-based work; it is the difference between a statement that a conservation officer accepts and one that triggers an objection. Unsurprisingly, it costs more than a statement for an unconstrained site.

A third driver is the quality and completeness of the design that the statement is describing. This sounds paradoxical, but it is central: a DAS is cheap to write when the design has been done thoroughly and the reasoning is already clear, because the statement simply articulates that reasoning. It is expensive when the design is thin or the rationale has to be worked out after the fact, because the writer effectively has to do design thinking to justify the drawings. A statement is not a substitute for good design, and trying to make it paper over a weak scheme is both costly and usually unsuccessful.

Other drivers include the level of consultation involved (schemes with public or stakeholder engagement have more to report), the policy complexity of the site (a Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land location adds tests to address), and the standard of presentation required — a major development statement with plans, photographs, diagrams and analysis is a more involved production than a short domestic statement. The way to control all of these is not to skimp on the statement, but to have it written by the designers as part of a coherent design process, so the analysis is done once and used everywhere.

Bromley is the largest of all the London boroughs by area and, unusually for London, ranges from dense suburb to genuine open countryside. In the north sit established suburbs such as Penge, Anerley and Beckenham; in the centre, the market town of Bromley itself and the leafy villages of Bickley and Chislehurst; and in the south and east, a broad swathe of Green Belt countryside taking in Downe, Cudham, Keston, Chelsfield, Pratt's Bottom, Farnborough and Biggin Hill. That range of character — Victorian and Edwardian suburb, historic village, and rural countryside — is exactly why design and heritage matter so much in Bromley planning, and therefore why a design and access statement so often carries real weight here.

The borough is rich in heritage. Bromley has more than forty designated conservation areas — Chislehurst has the largest — alongside conservation areas at Bickley Park, across Beckenham, at Crystal Palace Park and in many of the villages and older suburbs. It has a substantial stock of listed buildings, from grand houses to humble structures, and a great deal of protected open land. For a great many applications in Bromley, the site is either within a conservation area or affects a listed building or its setting, which is precisely when a design and access statement becomes a legal requirement and, more importantly, becomes the document on which the design case is won or lost.

Bromley's history is deep and genuinely notable. Charles Darwin lived at Down House in the village of Downe from 1842 and wrote On the Origin of Species there; the house and its landscape are preserved and open to the public. Crystal Palace, relocated to the ridge above Sydenham in 1854, gave its name to a whole district and, though the building itself burned down in 1936, the park and its famous Victorian dinosaur sculptures remain. Chislehurst's caves, common and historic centre, the mansions of Bickley and Beckenham, and the surviving farmsteads of the rural south all contribute to a borough where the past is visibly present — and where new development is expected to respect it.

For anyone preparing an application here, this context is not just colour; it is the reason the design and access statement matters. In a borough this conscious of its character, Bromley's planners expect proposals to demonstrate that they have understood their setting and responded to it — and the DAS is where that demonstration happens. A statement that shows a genuine reading of a Chislehurst street, a Beckenham conservation area or the setting of a listed building is doing real work; a generic one is a wasted opportunity and often a cause of delay. Knowing where your site sits in Bromley's map of designations is the starting point both for the statement and for its cost.

A design and access statement in Bromley is not written into a vacuum; it is written to satisfy the design and heritage policies of the borough's adopted development plan. Bromley adopted its Local Plan as the statutory development plan on 16 January 2019, and it is that plan, together with the London Plan, against which your proposal — and your statement — is judged. A DAS that engages with the right local policies by name and shows how the scheme meets them is far more persuasive than one that speaks only in generalities, and part of the value of a locally informed statement is exactly this engagement.

The central design policy is Policy 37, General Design of Development, which requires proposals to achieve a high standard of design and layout and to make a positive contribution to the local area and the street scene. A design and access statement is the natural place to demonstrate compliance with Policy 37 — to show that the amount, layout, scale, appearance and landscaping of the scheme have been considered against the character of the surroundings and genuinely enhance rather than harm it. For householder schemes, Policy 6 on residential extensions sets further expectations about subordinate, sympathetic additions that respect the host building and its neighbours.

On heritage, Policy 41 addresses conservation areas, requiring development to preserve or enhance their character and appearance — the statutory test for conservation areas — while further policies address listed buildings and other heritage assets. In a conservation area or on a listed building, the DAS has to do heritage work: identify the significance of the area or the building, and justify the proposal's impact against that significance and against these policies. Bromley also has an Urban Design Guide supplementary planning document that expands on the council's design expectations, and a statement that reflects it signals to the case officer that the scheme has engaged with the borough's own standards.

The practical consequence for cost is that a Bromley DAS is doing more than reciting national good practice; it is answering to a specific set of adopted policies and, on sensitive sites, to detailed conservation area appraisals — Bromley adopted new appraisal and management documents for several areas, including Bromley Town Centre and Shortlands Village, in June 2025. Engaging properly with the right policies and appraisals takes local knowledge and time, and it is part of what separates a statement that carries the application from one that merely accompanies it. It is also why a locally experienced author is worth the fee: they know which policies matter and can address them efficiently.

Bromley's conservation areas are the single most common reason that a scheme which would need no statement elsewhere needs one here. Because development in a conservation area triggers the DAS requirement at the much lower threshold of one dwelling or 100 square metres of floor space, a new house or a fair-sized extension within any of the borough's forty-plus conservation areas will generally require a statement — and, more to the point, will be judged against the statutory duty to preserve or enhance the area's character and appearance. That duty makes the DAS more than a formality: it is where the case that the scheme preserves or enhances the area is actually made.

The character of Bromley's conservation areas varies enormously, and a good statement has to respond to the specific area rather than to conservation areas in general. Chislehurst, the largest, has a distinctive village-and-common character with grand houses and mature landscape; Bickley Park is known for its spacious Victorian and Edwardian villas; the Beckenham conservation areas, Crystal Palace Park and the older village cores each have their own identity. A statement that reads the particular street, its building line, materials, plot rhythm and landscape, and shows the design responding to those specifics, is doing exactly what the council needs — and it is why local knowledge makes for a better and more efficient statement.

This is also where the cost of a conservation-area DAS is justified. The statement has to identify what gives the area its special character, assess how the proposal affects that character, and demonstrate — with reference to the relevant conservation area appraisal where one exists — that the scheme preserves or enhances it. That is real analytical work, not boilerplate, and it is the difference between an application that the conservation officer supports and one that draws an objection. A well-judged conservation-area statement can be the deciding factor in a marginal case.

For homeowners, the practical takeaway is that if your Bromley property is in a conservation area and your project is above the modest threshold, you should budget for a design and access statement and, more importantly, for a design that genuinely respects the area — because the two go together. The statement cannot rescue a scheme that fails to respect the conservation area, but a good scheme paired with a well-argued statement is a strong combination. Checking your conservation-area status at the outset, which we do as part of feasibility, is the first step in both the design and the budget.

If your Bromley project involves a listed building, a design and access statement is required for the listed building consent application regardless of size, and it is here that the statement works hardest and, correspondingly, costs the most to prepare well. Listed building consent is needed for works — internal or external — that affect the special architectural or historic interest of a listed building, and the legal test the council applies gives great weight to conserving that interest. The DAS is the document in which you demonstrate that you understand the building's significance and that your proposal respects it.

A listed building statement therefore has to do heritage analysis of a particular kind. It has to identify the significance of the building — what makes it special, which elements are the most important, how it has evolved — and then justify the proposed works against that significance, showing that harm is avoided or, where some limited harm is unavoidable, that it is minimised and outweighed by the benefits. This is skilled, evidence-based work, often drawing on documentary research and careful survey of the fabric, and it is why a listed building DAS sits at the higher end of the cost range. It is also why it should never be treated as a template: every listed building is different, and the case has to be made on its own facts.

Bromley has a considerable stock of listed buildings, from prominent country and suburban houses to more modest listed structures, spread across the borough and concentrated in its historic villages and older suburbs. Works to any of them — an extension, an internal alteration, a change to windows or a roof, even repairs using different materials — may need consent and therefore a statement. The council's conservation team scrutinises these applications closely, and a statement that fails to engage properly with significance is a common reason for refusal or for a request for more information, which delays the project.

The honest position on cost is that a listed building design and access statement is more expensive than an ordinary one because it has to be, and that this is money well spent. A refusal of listed building consent, or unauthorised works to a listed building, carries serious consequences, and the statement is a central part of getting consent lawfully and first time. We prepare listed building statements as part of a heritage-conscious design service, so the significance analysis informs the design from the start rather than being reconstructed to defend it afterwards — which produces both a better scheme and a more efficient statement.

A large part of Bromley — the majority of the borough by area — is Metropolitan Green Belt, and further open land is designated Metropolitan Open Land, which the London Plan protects to the same high standard. Where a scheme sits on Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land, the planning tests are more demanding, and a design and access statement (where one is required) has correspondingly more to justify. This is another way in which Bromley's particular geography can raise the work, and therefore the cost, of a statement compared with an unconstrained urban site elsewhere.

In the Green Belt, new building is treated as inappropriate development unless it falls within a recognised exception or very special circumstances are shown, and one of the key considerations is the effect on the openness of the Green Belt. A statement for a scheme in this context has to show how the design keeps the impact on openness to a minimum — through scale, siting, form and landscape — and how it fits within whatever policy exception the scheme relies on. That is a demanding piece of justification, and it means the design and the statement have to work together particularly closely on rural sites.

Metropolitan Open Land, found in parts of Bromley including major open spaces, carries essentially the same protection as Green Belt within London policy, so the same openness-led reasoning applies. Where a scheme also touches a conservation area or a listed building — as rural Bromley sites often do, given the borough's historic farmsteads and villages — the statement has to address heritage and openness together, which adds further to the work. None of this is a reason to avoid a statement; it is a reason to have it written by someone who understands how these tests interact in Bromley.

For cost, the practical effect is that a statement for a Green Belt or Metropolitan Open Land scheme in Bromley generally sits toward the higher end of the range for its size, because it has more policy ground to cover and higher hurdles to clear. But this is exactly the kind of scheme where a strong statement earns its fee many times over, because the margin between approval and refusal on protected land is narrow, and a clear, well-argued design case can be decisive. We identify at feasibility which designations apply to your site so the statement — and the budget — reflects the real tests it has to meet.

Understanding who actually reads a design and access statement helps explain why writing one well takes skill, and therefore why it has a real cost. The primary reader is the case officer at Bromley Council who determines the application. For the officer, the DAS is the document that explains the scheme's reasoning and provides the material they need to recommend approval; a clear, well-organised statement that addresses the relevant policies makes their job easier and their recommendation more likely to be positive. A confusing or generic statement makes the officer's job harder and gives them less to work with.

On sensitive sites, specialist consultees also read the statement. A conservation officer reads the heritage sections of a conservation-area or listed-building statement closely, looking for a genuine understanding of significance; a highways or access officer may read the access sections; and on larger schemes an urban design officer will scrutinise the design reasoning. Each of these readers is looking for evidence that their particular concern has been properly addressed, and the statement has to satisfy them all. The more consultees involved, the more the statement has to do — which is part of why larger, more sensitive schemes cost more to document.

The public reads the statement too. Planning applications are published, and neighbours, amenity societies and local groups — of which Bromley has several active ones, such as the Chislehurst Society — can and do read the design and access statement and respond to it. A statement that clearly and honestly explains the scheme can reduce objections by answering concerns before they are raised; a defensive or evasive one can provoke them. In a borough with engaged local communities, this public-facing role of the DAS is not trivial.

Finally, if the application is refused and goes to appeal, the Planning Inspectorate reads the statement as part of the case. A statement that set out a clear, policy-based justification at the outset is a strong foundation for an appeal; one that was thin or generic is a liability. So a design and access statement is not written for a single reader but for a chain of them, each with different concerns, and writing something that serves all of them well is genuinely skilled work. That is the true justification for its cost — and the reason a cheap, templated statement is often a false economy.

The design and access statement is a relatively recent creation, and knowing its history helps explain both what it is for and why its scope — and cost — settled where it did. The requirement came into force in England on 10 August 2006, introduced in response to long-standing criticism of the design quality of new development and as part of a wider policy push toward inclusive, accessible design. It brought together two previously separate strands — design justification and access statements — into a single document, and it was accompanied by influential guidance from CABE, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment, published in June 2006, on how to write, read and use them.

In its original form, the requirement was broad, applying to a wide range of applications including many small ones, and it generated a good deal of complaint that it was disproportionate for minor schemes. As a result, the government significantly narrowed the requirement, and from 25 June 2013 the thresholds took their current shape: statements became required for major development, for listed building consent, and — in conservation areas and other designated areas — for schemes of one dwelling or 100 square metres or more. That is the framework still in force today, carried into the DMPO 2015, and it is the reason a typical single house extension no longer needs a DAS while a conservation-area scheme still does.

The narrowing of 2013 was a deliberate proportionality measure: the aim was to keep the DAS where it adds value — on larger, more sensitive or heritage-related schemes — and to remove it where it had become a box-ticking burden on small projects. The effect for cost is that the DAS is now concentrated on exactly the schemes where design and access justification genuinely matters, which is why, when a statement is required at all, it is worth doing properly rather than minimally. The document survived the cull because, on the right projects, it does real work.

For Bromley in particular, this history has a clear consequence. Because so much of the borough is covered by conservation areas and dotted with listed buildings, the 2013 thresholds mean that a large share of Bromley applications still fall within the DAS requirement, even though the requirement was narrowed nationally. In effect, Bromley's heritage-rich character means the DAS remains a routine part of the application process here in a way it does not in less designated areas — which is exactly why understanding its cost and how to do it well is worth the homeowner's attention.

At Crown Architecture we prepare the design and access statement as an integral part of designing and submitting your scheme, not as a separate afterthought — and that is the single biggest reason our clients are rarely paying a large, standalone fee for one. The reasoning that goes into a good statement is the same reasoning that shapes a good design: reading the site's context, weighing the constraints and opportunities, and making deliberate decisions about amount, layout, scale, appearance, landscaping and access. When those decisions are made consciously during design, writing them up is a matter of articulating what has already been thought through.

The process starts with the context appraisal. We survey and analyse the site and its surroundings — the character of the street or the countryside, the building line and plot pattern, the materials and detailing of neighbouring buildings, the landscape, and the constraints of any conservation area or listed building. On heritage sites we assess significance specifically. This appraisal is the foundation both of the design and of the statement, and doing it once, well, serves both. It is where local knowledge of Bromley pays off, because we know the character of the borough's conservation areas and the expectations of its case officers.

We then set out the design components in the statement — explaining and justifying each decision against the context and against Bromley's Local Plan policies, particularly Policy 37 on general design, Policy 6 on residential extensions and, where relevant, Policy 41 on conservation areas and the listed building policies. The access section explains how everyone will reach and use the development, with genuine attention to inclusive design rather than a token paragraph. Where the scheme is in a conservation area or affects a listed building, the heritage sections identify significance and justify impact, referencing the relevant conservation area appraisal where one exists.

The result is a statement that is proportionate to the project — short and focused for a modest scheme, fuller and more analytical for a major or heritage development — and that reads as a genuine justification rather than a template. It is consistent with the drawings, engages the right policies, and gives the case officer what they need to say yes. Because we write it alongside the design, it is prepared efficiently and priced within our fixed design fee, so you are not paying twice for the same thinking. Where a client needs only a DAS for a scheme designed elsewhere, we prepare that too, priced transparently against its size and sensitivity.

Many of the ways a design and access statement ends up costing more than it should, or failing to do its job, are avoidable, and knowing them helps you get better value. The most common is the templated statement — a generic document that describes the drawings without genuinely justifying them, recycled from project to project with the addresses changed. Case officers and, especially, conservation officers recognise these instantly, and they add little to an application. A templated statement is cheap to produce but expensive in its effect, because it wastes the chance to make the design case and can invite objection.

The opposite error is the retrofitted statement — one commissioned after the design is finished, from someone who was not involved, who then has to reverse-engineer the reasoning from the drawings. This is genuinely expensive, because the writer effectively has to do design analysis after the fact, and it often reads as a defence rather than an explanation. Both problems stem from treating the DAS as separate from the design; both are avoided by writing it as part of the design process, which is faster, cheaper and produces a better document.

A third mistake is disproportion — either a thin statement for a scheme that needed a fuller one, or an overlong statement padded out for a simple project. A DAS should be proportionate to the development: a listed building or a major scheme needs real depth, while a small conservation-area extension needs focus, not filler. Getting the proportion right controls the cost and improves the quality; padding a statement to look substantial fools no one and wastes money.

The most costly mistake of all is a statement that ignores heritage or policy on a sensitive site — that fails to engage with the conservation area's character, the listed building's significance, or the relevant Local Plan policies. In heritage-rich Bromley this is a frequent cause of refusal or of a validation request for more information, and either outcome costs far more in delay and wasted fees than doing the statement properly would have. The lesson throughout is the same: a design and access statement is not the place to cut corners, but the way to keep its cost sensible is to integrate it with good design from the start.

A design and access statement is one document among several that may make up a Bromley planning submission, and understanding how it relates to the others helps you budget for the application as a whole rather than for the DAS in isolation. At the core of every application are the drawings — existing and proposed plans, elevations and sections, a location plan and a site plan — and the DAS explains and justifies what those drawings show. A statement is only as good as the design it describes, so the drawings and the statement have to be consistent and prepared together.

On heritage sites, the design and access statement is closely related to, and sometimes combined with, a heritage statement or heritage impact assessment. The two overlap: both deal with significance and impact, and on many Bromley conservation-area and listed-building applications the heritage analysis sits within the DAS itself rather than as a separate document. Whether to combine or separate them is a judgement about the scheme's complexity, and we advise on the most efficient approach for each project so you are not paying for duplicated work.

Depending on the site and the scheme, other supporting documents may be needed too: a planning statement setting out the policy case for larger applications; a flood risk assessment where the site is near a watercourse or in a flood zone; ecology surveys on sites with habitat value, which are common in Bromley's rural south; arboricultural reports where trees are affected; and various others. Each is a separate cost, and part of good early advice is identifying exactly which documents your application genuinely needs so that you neither under-provide and get refused nor over-provide and waste money.

The value of having one coordinated team prepare the whole submission is that the documents support rather than contradict one another. When the same practice designs the scheme, prepares the drawings and writes the design and access statement — and coordinates any specialist reports — the application reads as a coherent whole, which is both more persuasive to the case officer and more economical to produce than a patchwork of documents from different sources. We prepare the DAS within that coordinated submission, so it fits the wider application and shares the analysis rather than duplicating it.

It is worth setting the cost of a design and access statement next to the other costs of an application, so it stays in proportion. The council's own application fee is a separate, fixed charge set nationally. For a householder application — an extension or alteration to a single house — the fee rose to £548 from 1 April 2026; for a full application for a new dwelling the fee is considerably higher, and for major development higher again. These fees are the same whichever architect or consultant you use, and they are payable to the council on submission regardless of the DAS.

Against that, the design and access statement is a professional cost, not a council charge, and — as set out above — it is usually modest when prepared as part of the design work and only becomes a significant standalone figure on large or sensitive schemes. So on a typical Bromley conservation-area extension, the DAS is a relatively small part of the overall cost of getting to a decision, sitting alongside the design fee, the council fee and any specialist reports. Seeing it in that context helps avoid over-worrying about the statement's price while under-valuing its importance.

Pre-application advice is another cost worth considering, and it interacts with the DAS. Bromley, like most councils, offers a pre-application service for a fee, and on a sensitive or borderline scheme a written steer from the council before you submit can be valuable — and the analysis done for pre-application feeds directly into the design and access statement, so the two are complementary rather than duplicative. On a clear-cut scheme, pre-application may add little; on a listed building or a contested conservation-area site, it can save far more than it costs.

The overall point is that the design and access statement is one line in a sensible application budget, and the right way to think about it is value rather than headline price. A statement that helps secure permission first time is worth many times its cost in avoided delay and avoided refusal; a cheap statement that contributes to a refusal is expensive whatever its price tag. We set out all of these figures at the outset — the council fee, our fixed design fee (within which the DAS sits), any pre-application fee and any specialist reports — so there are no surprises and you can see the whole picture.

The process begins with feasibility, and it is here that we establish whether your project even needs a design and access statement, and what it will have to address. We check the site's designations — conservation area, listed building, Green Belt, Metropolitan Open Land — and the scale of the scheme against the DMPO thresholds, so we know immediately whether a DAS is required and how demanding it will be. This is also where we give you an honest view of the design constraints and the likely cost of the whole submission, statement included, before you commit.

We then design the scheme and prepare the drawings, with the design and access statement developing alongside them. Because the statement articulates the reasoning behind the design, writing it in parallel keeps the two consistent and means the context and significance analysis is done once and used for both. On heritage sites we engage with the significance of the conservation area or listed building from the start, so the design responds to it and the statement can justify it — rather than designing first and defending later.

When the submission is complete — drawings, design and access statement, and any specialist reports — we submit it to Bromley through the Planning Portal and manage it through validation and determination. Validation is the council's check that the application is complete, and a required-but-missing or plainly inadequate DAS is a common reason applications are held up at this stage; submitting a proper statement avoids that delay. Once validated, the application runs against the usual determination targets — commonly eight weeks for smaller applications, longer for major or complex schemes — during which we respond to the case officer's queries and negotiate any amendments needed to secure approval.

Throughout determination, the design and access statement continues to earn its place: it is the document the case officer, and any conservation or design consultee, returns to when weighing the scheme, and a strong one supports a positive recommendation. If amendments are agreed, we update the statement to match, keeping the submission consistent. Once permission is granted, we can take the scheme forward into the building-regulations and construction stages, so the same team that secured the consent also delivers the information needed to build it. The aim is a single, accountable service from first survey to finished project.

The cost of a design and access statement only makes sense alongside its value, and on the right project that value is substantial. The purpose of a DAS is to help win permission by making the design case clearly and persuasively, and permission is the thing on which the entire project depends. A statement that contributes to a first-time approval saves the months and the wasted fees that a refusal and resubmission — or an appeal — would cost, and it protects the momentum of the whole scheme. Measured against that, the price of doing the statement properly is small.

The value is greatest on exactly the schemes where Bromley requires a DAS: major developments, listed buildings and conservation-area projects. These are the schemes where the margin between approval and refusal is often narrow, where a case officer or conservation officer is weighing genuine design and heritage considerations, and where a clear, well-argued statement can be decisive. On such schemes a strong DAS is not an overhead but part of the design strategy — the document that turns a good scheme into an approved one.

There is also value in what a good DAS prevents. It reduces the risk of a validation delay from a missing or inadequate statement; it reduces the risk of an objection from a conservation officer or an amenity society by answering concerns before they arise; and it provides a solid foundation if the application ever goes to appeal. Each of these risks, if it materialises, costs far more than the statement did, so the statement functions partly as insurance against expensive outcomes.

For the homeowner or developer, the honest way to weigh the cost is therefore to ask not 'what is the cheapest DAS I can get?' but 'what statement gives this scheme the best chance of approval for a proportionate cost?'. The answer, almost always, is one written by the people who designed the scheme, engaging genuinely with Bromley's context and policies, proportionate to the project. That is what we provide, and it is why we treat the design and access statement as part of winning permission rather than as a document to be produced as cheaply as possible.

To make the numbers concrete, consider a common Bromley scenario: the owner of a period house within the Chislehurst conservation area wants to build a rear and side extension adding around 110 square metres of floor space. Because the property is in a conservation area and the scheme is above the 100 square metre threshold, a design and access statement is legally required, and because Chislehurst is a highly valued conservation area with an adopted character, the statement has to work hard to show the extension preserves or enhances that character.

At feasibility, we confirm the conservation-area status and the DAS requirement, survey the house and its context, and identify the features that give this part of Chislehurst its character — the building line, the roof forms, the materials, the mature landscape and the plot rhythm. This context appraisal is the foundation of both the design and the statement. We then design an extension that is subordinate and sympathetic to the host building, in keeping with Local Plan Policy 6 on residential extensions and Policy 37 on general design, and that respects the conservation area under Policy 41.

On cost, the design and access statement is prepared as part of our fixed design fee rather than as a separate large charge, because the reasoning it sets out is the same reasoning that shaped the extension. The statement itself is proportionate — focused and analytical rather than padded — engaging the relevant policies and the conservation area's character directly, and consistent with the drawings. Compared with the alternative of commissioning a standalone statement afterwards, which for a conservation-area scheme of this kind could run to several hundred pounds or more on its own, integrating it into the design service keeps the marginal cost modest and the quality high.

The submission — measured survey, existing and proposed drawings, and the design and access statement addressing context, the design components, access and the conservation-area heritage case — goes to Bromley through the Planning Portal as a coherent whole. Because the statement genuinely engages with Chislehurst's character and the council's policies, it gives the case officer and the conservation team the justification they need. That is the difference between an application designed and documented to be approved and one that is simply hoped through — and it is why, on a scheme like this, the design and access statement is money well spent rather than a cost to be minimised.

Crown Architecture prepares design and access statements across Bromley as part of a coordinated design and planning service, and we do it the way that produces the best statement for the most sensible cost: by writing it as an integral part of designing the scheme, so the reasoning in the statement is the reasoning that shaped the design. That integration is why our clients are rarely paying a large, separate fee for a DAS, and why our statements read as genuine justifications rather than retrofitted defences.

We know the Bromley context that makes a statement matter here: the borough's forty-plus conservation areas, its listed buildings, its extensive Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land, and the adopted Local Plan policies — Policy 37, Policy 6, Policy 41 and the rest — against which every scheme is judged. We use that knowledge to write statements that engage the right policies and the specific character of the site, which is both more persuasive to Bromley's case officers and more efficient to produce than a generic document that has to be reworked.

We are also straightforward about cost. We tell you at feasibility whether your project needs a design and access statement, how demanding it will be given the site's designations, and where in the range it is likely to fall — and we set the statement in the context of the whole application budget, including the council fee and any specialist reports, so you see the full picture. Where the DAS sits within our fixed design fee, we say so; where it is a standalone commission for a scheme designed elsewhere, we price it transparently against its size and sensitivity.

Above all, we treat the design and access statement as part of winning permission rather than as a box to tick. A good statement, paired with a good design, gives your scheme the best chance of approval first time — and in heritage-rich Bromley, where so many applications turn on design and conservation-area or listed-building considerations, that is worth a great deal. We prepare the statement, submit and manage the application with Bromley, and — once permission is granted — carry the project forward into construction, so you have a single accountable point of contact throughout.

If you are planning work in Bromley and want to know whether you need a design and access statement, roughly what it will cost, and how to make it work for your application, send us the address and what you have in mind. We will tell you honestly whether a DAS is required, where in the range it will sit, and how we would approach it.