New Build Planning Drawings in Barnet

A new build is exactly what it sounds like: the construction of a wholly new dwelling, rather than the alteration, extension or conversion of an existing one. In planning terms the erection of a new building is 'development', and a new dwelling — a house or a flat — is a form of development that the planning system takes seriously, because it adds a home to the borough with everything that entails: an address, occupants, traffic, drainage, refuse, a call on local infrastructure, and a permanent mark on the street and the skyline. That is why a new dwelling almost always needs full planning permission and is assessed against the whole development plan.

New build planning drawings are the set of scaled drawings that turn your idea for a new home into something Barnet can measure, check against its policies and grant or refuse. They are not a formality bolted on at the end of the design process; they are the application. A written description — 'build a three-bedroom house in the garden' — tells the council almost nothing it needs to know. How big is it? How tall? How does it sit in the plot? How far is it from the neighbours' windows? Does it overlook them, or overshadow their gardens? Do the rooms meet the space standards? Where do the bins, bikes and car go? Every one of those questions is answered on a drawing, and every one of them can decide the application.

Because a new dwelling is judged in the round rather than against a checklist, the drawings have to do more work than they do on many other project types. They have to show not only what is being built, but how it responds to the character of the street, how it protects the amenity of its neighbours, how it meets the space, light and quality standards for the homes inside it, and how it deals with the practical realities of parking, refuse, cycle storage, drainage and trees. A new-build drawing set is, in effect, a complete argument for why the new home should be allowed — made visually.

Getting the drawings right from the outset is the first thing we do on any Barnet new build. It determines whether the plot can take a home at all, how large and how tall that home can reasonably be, and what has to be drawn to satisfy both the validation team and the case officer. Start there and the rest of the project runs smoothly; get it wrong and you can lose months to an invalidation or a refusal that a properly prepared, policy-led set would have avoided.

The most common new-build client in Barnet is the owner of a large plot who wants to make more of it: a homeowner with a generous garden who can see space for a second house, a family who want to build a new home for a relative at the end of the garden, or a landowner with a wide corner plot that could take a house alongside the existing one. Barnet's stock of Edwardian and inter-war houses on deep, wide plots means these opportunities exist across the borough — but they also run straight into the council's protection of suburban character, garden land and the spacing between houses, so the design and the drawings have to be handled with real care.

The second big group is people replacing a dwelling — demolishing a tired, poorly configured or structurally failing house and building a new one in its place. A replacement dwelling is still a new build in planning terms, and while the principle of a home on the site is established, the council will look closely at the size, height, footprint and design of the replacement against what it replaces and against the character of the street. Getting the balance right between a genuinely better home and a proposal the council will see as overdevelopment is the central drawing challenge on a replacement.

Small developers and self-builders make up the third group: those buying a plot, a redundant garage site, a cleared site or an underused piece of land specifically to build one or a handful of new homes. For these clients the planning drawings are the asset — a site with a good, consented scheme is worth far more than a bare plot — so the quality and the deliverability of the drawings matter commercially as well as technically. We prepare drawings that are designed to gain consent and to be built to a budget, not just to look attractive on a screen.

Finally there are owners of larger or more complex sites — a backland plot behind a row of houses, a plot in or near the green belt, a site in a conservation area, or a small block of flats on a town-centre or main-road site — where the planning and design questions are more demanding and the drawings have to answer more searching tests. Whatever the scale, the principle is the same: a new dwelling in Barnet is granted when the drawings show a well-designed home that respects its context, meets the standards, and can actually be built. That is what we set out to produce.

The first and most important thing to understand about a new dwelling in Barnet is that it needs full planning permission. Permitted development rights — the rules that let you extend or alter a house without a full application — do not extend to building a brand-new separate dwelling. There is no permitted-development route to a new house on a garden plot, a new home alongside an existing one, or a block of flats on a cleared site. Even a replacement dwelling, where a home already exists on the site, needs full planning permission for the new building. Anyone who tells you a new dwelling can be built under permitted development is mistaken, and acting on that advice leads straight to enforcement.

A full planning application for a new dwelling is assessed against the entire development plan — the London Plan, Barnet's adopted Local Plan, and any relevant supplementary guidance — rather than against a narrow set of permitted-development criteria. That means the case officer weighs the principle of a new home on the site, its design and its effect on the character of the area, its impact on neighbours' living conditions, the quality of the homes it creates, and a long list of technical matters from trees and drainage to parking and refuse. The application stands or falls on the balance of all of these, and the drawings are the evidence on every one of them.

There are two broad scales of full application. A single dwelling (or up to a handful of homes) is a 'minor' application, decided by the council against an eight-week statutory target. Ten or more dwellings, or a site of half a hectare or more, is a 'major' application, decided against a thirteen-week target and carrying additional requirements — most importantly affordable housing and a fuller suite of technical reports. Knowing which category your scheme falls into at the outset tells us what has to be drawn and submitted, and how the application will be handled.

Outline permission is an alternative route worth knowing about. An outline application establishes the principle of a new dwelling on a site while reserving the details — the 'reserved matters' of appearance, landscaping, layout and scale — for later approval. It can be useful for a landowner testing whether a site is developable before investing in a full design, but for most single new homes a full 'detailed' application is the more efficient route, because the design has to be resolved to be assessed properly anyway. We advise on which route suits your site and your objectives, and prepare the drawings each route requires.

Barnet adopted its new Local Plan, covering the period 2021 to 2036, on 4 March 2025, replacing the older suite of development-plan documents. It is the framework against which every new-build application in the borough is judged, and knowing which policies apply lets us design the scheme — and draw it — around them rather than hoping to satisfy them by accident. Several policy groups come into play on almost every new dwelling.

The plan is built around growth: Barnet is required to plan for a very large number of new homes over the plan period — a target of tens of thousands of dwellings, at more than two thousand a year — so the principle of new housing is strongly supported where it is well-designed and in the right place. The housing policies (the HOU group) set the framework: HOU01 deals with affordable housing (relevant to larger schemes), and HOU02 deals with housing mix — the range of sizes and types of home the council wants to see, with a particular emphasis on family-sized housing. Other HOU policies address the efficient use of the borough's housing stock, specialist and older persons' housing, and residential conversions.

The character, design and heritage policies — the CDH group — govern the design quality of a new dwelling and its effect on the area, and they bite hard on new build in a suburban borough. The headline policy, CDH01 (Promoting High Quality Design), was strengthened at examination to press for a 'design-led' approach that optimises the capacity of a site through good design rather than simply maximising the number of units, and to require every proposal to demonstrate a genuine understanding of local character. A new house that respects the scale, rhythm, spacing, materials and building line of its street is working with these policies; one that ignores them is working against them.

None of this is abstract. Every one of these policies expresses itself, in the end, as something that has to be visible on a drawing: a home of the right size and type to meet the mix policy, a design that sits comfortably in the street to meet the character policy, rooms that meet the space standard, windows placed to protect neighbours' privacy, a footprint that keeps a sensible gap to the boundaries, and space for parking, refuse and cycles that actually works. We design to the policies and then draw so that compliance is plain — so the case officer can see, at a glance, that the scheme meets Barnet's tests and can recommend approval without having to fill gaps themselves.

Above Barnet's own Local Plan sits the London Plan, the Mayor's spatial development strategy for Greater London, which every new dwelling in the borough must also accord with. Two of its policies matter most for new build. Policy D3 sets a 'design-led approach' to optimising site capacity: rather than applying a fixed density formula, it asks that each site be developed to the most appropriate form having regard to its context, its transport accessibility and the quality of life it will offer — increasing housing supply, but through good design rather than cramming. Barnet's CDH01 dovetails with this, which is why the design rationale for a new home is so central to a Barnet application.

Policy D6 governs housing quality and standards, and it is where the London Plan sets the bar for the homes themselves. It applies the nationally described space standards as the minimum internal floor areas, and then adds London-specific requirements on top — most notably a floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2.5 metres for three-quarters of the gross internal area (higher than the 2.3-metre national minimum), a private outdoor amenity space of at least 5 square metres for a one- or two-person home (plus a square metre for each further occupant), and a strong steer against single-aspect homes, especially north-facing ones or those with three or more bedrooms. These are not optional refinements; they are requirements a Barnet case officer will check, and they shape the section drawings, the window layout and the plan.

The London Plan also brings in the wider agenda that a new home has to answer: sustainable design and energy (the 'be lean, be clean, be green' energy hierarchy and, for major schemes, a target of net-zero-carbon), urban greening and biodiversity, sustainable drainage, cycle parking and car-free or car-lite development in accessible locations, and fire safety. On a single dwelling many of these are handled proportionately, but the principles still apply, and the drawings and supporting information have to show that the home has been designed with them in mind.

In practice, the London Plan and Barnet's Local Plan pull in the same direction: well-designed, good-quality homes that respect their context and meet high standards inside and out. We design new dwellings to satisfy both tiers of policy from the first sketch, and we draw so that the case officer — and the Mayor's officers on any referable major scheme — can see that the standards are met. Designing to the standards rather than testing them is the surest route to a consent.

The London Borough of Barnet was created in 1965 from a cluster of formerly independent Middlesex and Hertfordshire districts — Hendon, Finchley, Friern Barnet, and the urban districts of Barnet and East Barnet — and that patchwork origin still shapes it. Chipping Barnet, at the northern edge, grew up as a medieval market town on the Great North Road, with coaching inns, a surviving medieval street pattern and the long-established Barnet Fair; the Battle of Barnet was fought nearby in 1471 during the Wars of the Roses. Further south, Barnet is overwhelmingly a story of twentieth-century suburban expansion, as the railways and then the Northern line pushed London outwards and areas such as Finchley, Hendon, Golders Green and Edgware filled with the inter-war semi-detached and detached housing that is the borough's defining building type.

That suburban character is not incidental to new build in Barnet; it is the single most important context for it. Much of the borough is made up of streets with a strong, consistent rhythm — houses of a similar scale, set back a similar distance, with generous gaps to their neighbours and mature front and back gardens. The council prizes this rhythm and cohesiveness, and its design policies and its Residential Design Guidance are written specifically to protect it. A new dwelling that fits this grain — that matches the building line, respects the spacing, keeps to a compatible scale and uses sympathetic materials — has a genuine chance; one that breaks the rhythm, fills a gap the street relies on, or looms over its neighbours will meet strong resistance.

Barnet's crowning heritage asset is Hampstead Garden Suburb, developed between 1907 and 1938 to a formal plan and designated a conservation area in 1968 — one of the most famous planned communities in the world, celebrated for its Arts and Crafts architecture and its pioneering town-planning ideas. The borough has sixteen conservation areas in all — among them Mill Hill, with Georgian and Victorian houses in generous plots overlooking the Totteridge Valley; Monken Hadley, with its Georgian houses around a village green; and Totteridge, protected for its semi-rural character and historic manor houses set among green-belt fields — plus more than two thousand listed buildings. New dwellings in or near these areas face additional design and heritage tests, and in several of them Article 4 Directions have removed permitted-development rights to protect their character.

The northern and western fringes of the borough — Totteridge, Arkley, parts of Mill Hill and the Dollis and Folly valleys — are green belt and Metropolitan Open Land, and here new build faces the strictest test of all. Barnet's own Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land Study (2018) underpins strong protection, and appeal history in the area is instructive: proposals for new houses at Arkley have been refused for reducing the openness of the green belt and for contributing to what one inspector called the 'creeping suburbanisation' of it. Knowing exactly where your site sits in Barnet's map — suburban street, conservation area, green belt or open land — is the starting point for any credible new-build scheme, because it determines what, if anything, can be built.

New-build housing in Barnet has moved through distinct phases, and understanding them explains why the council approaches new dwellings the way it does today. The first and defining phase was the great inter-war suburban expansion: between the wars, speculative builders threw up mile after mile of semi-detached and detached houses across Finchley, Hendon, Edgware and beyond, giving the borough the low-density, garden-rich, rhythmic streets that still dominate it. That legacy is a blessing and a constraint — it created the plots that new-build opportunities now arise on, and the character that the council is determined to protect from unsympathetic new development.

The second phase, from the late twentieth century onward, was infill and intensification. As land ran short and house prices rose, attention turned to the gaps: garden plots, wide corner sites, redundant garages and the backland behind existing rows of houses. This is where the tension at the heart of Barnet new build first sharpened — between the pressure to add homes and the desire to keep the spacious, green suburban character. The council's response, over successive plans and its Residential Design Guidance, has been to allow infill and backland development in principle but to hold it to demanding standards on scale, spacing, amenity, trees and impact on neighbours.

The third and current phase is plan-led growth combined with fierce protection of the most valued places. Barnet's adopted Local Plan (March 2025) plans for a very large number of new homes and directs the bulk of that growth to sustainable locations — town centres, main roads, and identified growth areas — where higher-density, residential-led development is welcomed. At the same time the plan and its green-belt evidence base double down on protecting the green belt, Metropolitan Open Land, conservation areas and prevailing suburban character elsewhere. The result is a borough that says a clear 'yes' to good new homes in the right places, and an equally clear 'no' to the wrong development in the wrong place.

The through-line is that Barnet has moved from a permissive, builder-led approach towards a carefully managed, design-led one. The council has seen what unsympathetic infill and overdevelopment do to a suburban street, and its adopted plan, its design guidance and its Article 4 Directions are deliberate attempts to steer new build towards good outcomes. For an applicant, the lesson is that quality and fit matter more than ever: the new dwellings that succeed are the well-designed, well-drawn ones that add a home while respecting everything the council is trying to protect.

The classic Barnet new-build opportunity is the infill plot — a gap in an otherwise built-up frontage, a wide plot that can be subdivided, or a corner site with room for an additional house. Infill is acceptable in principle where the new home respects the character of the street: the same building line, a compatible scale and roof form, sensible gaps to the boundaries, and no harmful overlooking or overshadowing of neighbours. The design and drawing challenge is to make the new house read as a natural part of the street rather than a squeezed-in addition. Where a plot is genuinely too narrow, or where the gap is part of the street's spacious character, the honest answer is that it should not be built on — and we say so at feasibility.

Backland development — building on the land behind an existing row of houses, typically in rear gardens accessed by a new drive — is more difficult and more contentious. Barnet scrutinises backland schemes hard, because they can harm the character of an area, erode the openness of back gardens, overlook and overshadow neighbours, and create awkward, poorly overlooked access. A backland scheme can succeed where the site is large enough to create a genuinely good home with proper amenity, adequate separation from surrounding houses, a safe and unobtrusive access, and protection for trees and boundaries — but it needs a thoughtful design and a carefully argued application, and many backland proposals are refused. The drawings have to demonstrate that the concerns have been answered, not gloss over them.

Garden-land development sits within the wider debate about 'garden grabbing' — building new homes on the private gardens of existing houses. National policy no longer treats gardens as 'brownfield' land to be built on freely, and Barnet's protection of suburban character and garden land means garden plots are assessed carefully for their effect on the spaciousness and greenness of an area. A single, well-designed house on a genuinely large garden that keeps the street's character can be acceptable; carving up a garden to cram in units that erode the openness the area depends on will not be. Again, the drawings and the design have to show respect for the very character the policy protects.

Replacement dwellings are a category of their own. Demolishing an existing house and building a new one is a new-build application, and while the principle of a home on the site is established, the council looks closely at the size, height, footprint, bulk and design of the replacement against the house it replaces and against the street. A replacement that is a sympathetic, better home broadly in keeping with its context is usually acceptable; one that is dramatically larger or taller, that overwhelms its plot, or that harms neighbours' amenity, will be resisted as overdevelopment. The drawings for a replacement dwelling always show the existing house as well as the proposed one, so the council can weigh the change — and getting the scale of the replacement right is the central judgement.

A significant part of northern and western Barnet — around Totteridge, Arkley, parts of Mill Hill, and the Dollis and Folly valleys — is designated green belt or Metropolitan Open Land, and here new build faces the strictest test in the planning system. The fundamental aim of green-belt policy is to keep land permanently open, and national policy treats the construction of new buildings in the green belt as 'inappropriate development' that is, by definition, harmful and should not be approved except in very specific circumstances or where 'very special circumstances' exist that clearly outweigh the harm. A speculative new house on green-belt land is exactly the kind of proposal that policy is designed to resist.

There are narrow exceptions. National policy allows the limited infilling of villages, the replacement of an existing building with one not materially larger than the one it replaces, and — in genuinely exceptional cases — the redevelopment of previously developed (brownfield) land in the green belt where it does not cause greater harm to openness. A replacement dwelling in the green belt is therefore possible, but the size and volume constraint is real: a new house materially larger than the one it replaces will be refused as inappropriate development, so the design and the drawings have to demonstrate that the replacement is genuinely comparable in scale.

Barnet's own evidence base reinforces this. The council's Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land Study (2018) assesses the contribution its open land makes to the purposes of the green belt, and the Local Plan carries strong protection forward. Local appeal decisions show how firmly this is applied: proposals for new chalet-style houses at Arkley have been dismissed on appeal for reducing the openness of the Dollis Valley green belt and for contributing to the 'creeping suburbanisation' of it, even where the surrounding area already contains large houses in generous plots. The message is that openness, not the pattern of nearby development, is the test.

If your site is in the green belt or on Metropolitan Open Land, the very first thing we do is establish that position and give you a frank assessment of what — if anything — can be built. Sometimes the answer is a carefully scaled replacement dwelling within the volume limits; sometimes it is a modest, genuinely comparable rebuild; and sometimes the honest answer is that a new dwelling is not achievable and the effort is better spent elsewhere. We would far rather tell you that at the outset than take you into a costly application designed to fail. Where a scheme is achievable, the drawings are prepared with particular care to demonstrate that openness is preserved.

A new dwelling is a home from the ground up, so the internal quality of the design carries as much weight as its external appearance — and the benchmark is the nationally described space standards, applied through the London Plan and Barnet's policies. These set minimum internal floor areas by the number of bedrooms and occupants: a one-bedroom, one-person home must be at least 37 square metres, a one-bedroom, two-person home at least 50 square metres, a two-bedroom, three-person home at least 61 square metres, a three-bedroom, five-person house at least 93 square metres, and so on, with minimum bedroom sizes and minimum built-in storage on top. For a new build, unlike a conversion, there is no excuse for undersized rooms — the home is being designed from scratch, so it should meet or exceed the standards comfortably.

The London Plan adds requirements that shape the design in three dimensions. A floor-to-ceiling height of at least 2.5 metres over three-quarters of the floor area affects the section and the overall height of the building. Private outdoor amenity space — a garden, a terrace or a balcony — is required for every home, at least 5 square metres for a smaller home and more for larger ones. And single-aspect homes, especially north-facing ones and family homes, are strongly discouraged, which drives the plan towards dual-aspect layouts where habitable rooms face more than one direction for light and cross-ventilation. On a house these are usually straightforward; on a small block of flats they are central design constraints.

Daylight, outlook and privacy shape the layout throughout. Habitable rooms need good natural light and a pleasant outlook, which influences where they sit and how they are glazed. At the same time the windows have to be placed to avoid overlooking neighbours' gardens and windows — a recurring reason for objections and refusals on new homes in tight suburban plots — so the design balances light into the new home against privacy for the people around it. Barnet's Residential Design Guidance sets out the separation distances and amenity expectations the council applies, and we design to them from the start.

Good new-build design also thinks about how the home will be lived in and how it will last: sensible room relationships, adequate kitchen and bathroom provision, proper storage, level or step-free access where it can be achieved, and accessibility standards (the London Plan requires a proportion of new homes to be built to accessible and adaptable standards, and a proportion of larger schemes to wheelchair standards). We design the plan around these requirements and annotate the drawings so the council can see that each home meets the space standard, gets good light, protects its neighbours and provides proper amenity — the internal case for the new dwelling, made on the page.

A new build is a complete structure designed from the ground up, and that is a fundamentally bigger structural undertaking than the alterations involved in an extension or a conversion. Everything has to be designed: the foundations, the ground-floor construction, the loadbearing walls or frame, the upper floors, the roof, and the way loads travel down through the building into the ground. Crown designs the architecture and the structure together, so the home you submit for planning is not just a shape on a drawing but a coordinated, buildable structure — which matters enormously on a new build, because the structural design and the architecture are completely interdependent.

Foundations are the first and often the most site-specific decision. The right foundation depends on the ground conditions, which is why a new build usually needs ground investigation — trial pits or boreholes — to establish the soil type and bearing capacity. Barnet has significant areas of London Clay, which is shrinkable and prone to seasonal movement, so foundations frequently have to be designed to cope with clay: deeper trench-fill foundations, or piled foundations on more difficult ground. The presence of nearby trees is a major factor on clay, because tree roots draw moisture and can cause heave or subsidence — so the foundation design has to account for existing and removed trees, another reason the arboricultural and structural work must be coordinated.

Above the foundations, the superstructure is designed as a whole: the loadbearing masonry or timber-frame walls, or a steel or concrete frame for a larger building, the floor structures, lintels and beams over every opening, and the roof structure. A new dwelling has to carry its own weight plus the loads imposed on it — people and furniture, wind, and snow — and every element is sized with calculations so it is safe and efficient. On a small block of flats or a larger house the structural design is correspondingly more involved, with transfer structures, larger spans and the need to coordinate the frame with the services and the fire strategy.

Because we design the structure alongside the architecture and the services, the planning drawings we submit are genuinely deliverable, and the transition to a full structural package and Building Regulations submission is smooth rather than a fresh start. A new dwelling designed by an architect in isolation can turn out to be awkward or expensive to build once the engineer gets to it; a new dwelling designed by a team that does both from the start is buildable by design. That coordination is one of the biggest practical advantages of having architecture and engineering under one roof on a new build.

A new dwelling needs a complete set of building services — the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) systems that make a house a home — designed from scratch rather than adapted from what already exists. That includes the heating and hot-water system, the ventilation strategy, the electrical installation, the incoming water supply, the foul and surface-water drainage, and increasingly the low-carbon and renewable systems that current and future energy standards require. On a new build all of these can be designed properly from the outset, integrated with the architecture and the structure, which is one of the real opportunities of building new.

Heating and hot water are being transformed by the move away from fossil fuels. New homes are moving decisively towards low-carbon heating — principally air-source heat pumps — and the space and system design for a heat pump (the external unit, the pipework, the cylinder, the emitters) has to be built into the design from the start rather than squeezed in later. Ventilation matters just as much in a well-insulated, airtight new home: modern dwellings typically need a designed ventilation strategy, often mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) or a comparable system, to keep the air fresh and avoid condensation and mould without throwing away heat.

The rest of the services are designed around the home: the electrical layout with adequate circuits, sockets and lighting, provision for electric-vehicle charging where there is parking, the water supply and the internal plumbing, and the drainage — both foul drainage to the sewer and surface-water drainage designed sustainably (covered in the next section). On a block of flats the services become more involved, with communal systems, metering, risers and coordination between units, and the fire strategy interacts closely with the services design.

Designing the services alongside the architecture and the structure — rather than leaving them to be resolved on site — is what stops the classic new-build problems: heat-pump units with nowhere sensible to go, ventilation ducts that clash with the structure, or a plan that cannot accommodate the systems a modern home needs. Crown coordinates the MEP with the rest of the design so the home works as a whole, and so the drawings that go to planning already anticipate the services the building regulations and the energy standards will demand.

Every new dwelling in England has to demonstrate that it meets the energy-efficiency requirements of Part L of the Building Regulations, and for a new home this is done through an energy calculation — historically the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) — that models the building's fabric, heating, hot water, ventilation and any renewables and shows that its predicted carbon emissions and energy use are within the required limits. A new build has to hit these targets from the outset, so the energy strategy — insulation levels, airtightness, glazing, heating and renewables — is a design decision, not an afterthought, and it feeds directly into the drawings and specification.

The rules are tightening significantly through the Future Homes Standard. The current Part L (2021) already requires new homes to produce substantially lower carbon emissions than earlier standards. The full Future Homes Standard raises the bar much further: the government has confirmed that the Building Regulations amendments will come into force on 24 March 2027, and new homes built to the standard will emit, on average, at least 75 per cent less carbon than homes built under the older 2013 standards, will be 'zero-carbon ready' so that they become zero-emission as the electricity grid decarbonises, and will be expected to include on-site renewable electricity generation such as solar panels. Compliance will not be possible with fossil-fuel heating, so new homes will need low-carbon heating, primarily heat pumps.

The way compliance is demonstrated is also changing. The Future Homes Standard introduces the Home Energy Model (HEM) to replace SAP as the assessment tool for new dwellings, alongside a new Building Regulations requirement (a functional requirement, L3) for on-site renewable electricity generation. Schemes with planning applications submitted before the standard comes into force may be able to build to the previous energy standards for a transitional period, but the direction of travel is clear, and designing a new home now with the Future Homes Standard in mind — good fabric, a heat pump, solar and proper ventilation — future-proofs it and avoids a costly redesign later.

For your project this means the energy strategy is part of the architecture from day one. We design the fabric, the heating, the ventilation and the renewables together with the plan and the structure, so the drawings show a home that will comply, the roof and plant space accommodate the solar and the heat pump, and the specification is realistic about the (modest) additional build cost — the government's own impact assessment puts the extra cost of building to the Future Homes Standard at roughly £4,350 per dwelling on average. Building a genuinely low-carbon home costs a little more up front and repays it in comfort and running costs, and doing it deliberately from the design stage is far cheaper than retrofitting compliance later.

A new dwelling creates new drainage demands — foul drainage from the home, and surface-water runoff from its roofs and hard surfaces — and both have to be designed and shown on the drawings. Foul drainage normally connects to the public sewer, and the design has to demonstrate a viable connection with adequate falls and, where the site is lower than the sewer, pumping. Surface-water drainage is where policy has moved decisively: new development is expected to manage rainwater on site through sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) rather than simply piping it all into the sewer, both to reduce flood risk and to mimic the way water behaves on undeveloped land.

SuDS for a single new home might mean permeable paving instead of solid hardstanding, a soakaway or infiltration crate to let rainwater return to the ground, water butts and green or blue roofs, or an attenuation tank that stores runoff and releases it slowly. The London Plan sets a drainage hierarchy that pushes designers towards infiltration and green solutions first and discharge to the sewer only as a last resort, and Barnet applies it. The right solution depends on the ground conditions — infiltration works well on permeable soils but poorly on Barnet's London Clay, where attenuation and controlled discharge are often needed instead — which is another reason ground investigation matters early.

Flood risk has to be assessed too. Most of Barnet is at low risk of river or sea flooding, but parts of the borough near the Dollis Brook, Silk Stream, Pymmes Brook and other watercourses fall within higher flood-risk zones, and surface-water (pluvial) flooding can affect low-lying sites anywhere. A new dwelling on or near a flood-risk area needs a flood risk assessment demonstrating that the home is safe and does not increase flood risk elsewhere, and the design may need to raise finished floor levels or incorporate resilience measures. We check the flood-risk position at the outset because it can shape the whole design.

The drainage and SuDS strategy is drawn and described as part of the application: a drainage layout showing foul and surface-water routes, the SuDS features and how they are sized, and — where needed — a flood risk assessment and a drainage statement. Getting this right is not just a planning requirement but a practical one, because a new home with poorly designed drainage causes problems for its occupants and its neighbours for the life of the building. We design the drainage into the scheme from the start rather than bolting it on at the end.

Many new-build projects in Barnet begin with demolition — of an existing house being replaced, or of garages, outbuildings or hardstanding on the plot. Demolition is a controlled activity: substantial demolition can need a 'prior notification' to the council, and in a conservation area the demolition of a building (or a boundary wall) can need conservation-area consent or planning permission in its own right, so the demolition question has to be checked alongside the new-build application rather than assumed. Demolition also has to be carried out safely and with proper regard to asbestos, dust, noise and the neighbours, under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations and the council's environmental controls.

Where a new dwelling is built close to a boundary — as infill and backland homes often are — the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is likely to apply. The Act governs work on or near a shared boundary: excavating for new foundations within three metres of a neighbouring building (or six metres in some cases), building a new wall on or at the boundary line, and similar operations. It runs entirely separately from planning permission and Building Regulations, and it requires formal notice to the affected neighbours and, usually, a party wall award prepared by a surveyor before work starts. Getting the party wall process going in good time avoids delays once you are ready to build, and we flag it early so it is not a last-minute surprise.

Trees are one of the most decisive site matters on a Barnet new build. The borough's leafy suburban character means many plots contain mature trees, and trees are frequently protected by Tree Preservation Orders or by being within a conservation area — where six weeks' notice is required before most tree work. A new dwelling has to be designed around the trees worth keeping: an arboricultural survey identifies the trees, their condition and their root protection areas, and the layout, the foundations and the construction method have to respect them. Loss of good trees, or building so close that they cannot survive, is a common reason for refusal, so trees shape the design and the drawings from the start.

The other site matters — levels, boundaries, access, existing services, contamination on a former commercial or industrial plot, and the practicalities of getting materials and machinery onto a tight site — all feed into the design and, where relevant, into the supporting documents. A new build is as much about the site as about the building, and a scheme that has understood its site (its ground, its trees, its levels, its neighbours and its access) is far more likely to gain consent and to be built without expensive surprises. We survey and assess the site thoroughly before we design, and draw so the council can see the site has been properly understood.

A new dwelling almost always attracts the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) — a charge, calculated per square metre, that local authorities levy on new floorspace to help fund the infrastructure that growth requires. In Barnet there are two layers. The borough's own CIL applies to net additional residential floorspace; Barnet's current charging schedule (approved in 2022) sets a residential rate in the region of £300 per square metre, and the figure is indexed for inflation each year from the base date, so the amount payable rises over time. On top of that, the Mayor of London's CIL applies across the capital to help fund strategic infrastructure such as the transport network. Both are charged on the new floorspace a scheme creates.

CIL is calculated on the net increase in floorspace, so a replacement dwelling that demolishes an existing home may be able to offset the floorspace of the building being lost — an important point that can significantly reduce the charge, provided the existing building has been in lawful use for the required period. New floorspace over the relevant threshold, and any new dwelling however small, is generally chargeable. Certain reliefs and exemptions exist — most importantly a self-build exemption for a home you are building for yourself to live in, and exemptions for some annexes and extensions — but these have to be claimed correctly, before commencement, following a strict procedure, or the relief is lost and the full charge becomes payable.

CIL is not the only financial obligation. Larger, 'major' schemes (generally ten or more homes) engage affordable-housing requirements under Barnet's and the London Plan's policies, usually delivered on site or, where that is not possible, through a financial contribution, and secured by a legal agreement (a Section 106 agreement). Section 106 agreements can also secure other site-specific contributions or restrictions. For a single new dwelling these major-scheme obligations usually do not apply, but CIL almost always does, so it should be budgeted for from the outset.

We set the CIL and any Section 106 position out clearly at feasibility, so the levy is a known cost rather than an unwelcome surprise after consent. On a self-build we make sure the self-build exemption is claimed properly and in time; on a replacement dwelling we establish the offset for the demolished floorspace; and on a larger scheme we advise on the affordable-housing and Section 106 implications. Getting the CIL procedure right — the assumption of liability, the commencement notice, and any exemption claim, all in the correct order and at the correct time — is genuinely important, because the penalties for getting it wrong are severe and the reliefs are unforgiving of mistakes.

Bringing it together, a Crown new-build package for a Barnet application is a complete, coordinated set designed to validate first time and to be approved on its merits. It tells the council everything it needs to judge a new dwelling: where the home sits, how it relates to its plot and its neighbours, what it looks like from every side, how big and how tall it is, how the homes inside it work, and how the practical matters of parking, refuse, cycles, drainage and trees are dealt with. And because we design the structure and services alongside the architecture, the same set carries the scheme into construction.

The planning drawing package for a new dwelling normally includes: an accurate measured and topographical survey of the site, including levels, boundaries and trees; a location plan (1:1250, or 1:2500 for a larger site) with the application site edged in red and any other land in the same ownership edged in blue; a site plan (typically 1:500 or 1:200) showing the proposed dwelling in its plot with access, parking, refuse and cycle stores, boundaries and landscaping; and, where a house is being replaced, existing plans and elevations of the building to be demolished. On top of that come the proposed drawings of the new home itself.

The proposed drawings are the heart of the set: proposed floor plans for every level, drawn to scale with rooms labelled, dimensioned and their areas annotated against the space standards; proposed elevations of every face of the building, showing its appearance, materials and its relationship to neighbouring buildings; proposed sections showing heights, floor-to-ceiling dimensions, levels and the relationship to the ground and to adjoining land; a proposed roof plan; and a street-scene or context elevation showing the new home alongside its neighbours, which is often decisive in demonstrating that it fits the street. Every drawing is to a recognised metric scale, with a scale bar and north point, properly titled and numbered.

Alongside the drawings we prepare the supporting documents a new dwelling needs: a Design and Access Statement (frequently required for new dwellings, and always worth providing) explaining and justifying the design; a planning statement setting out how the scheme meets the London Plan and Barnet's Local Plan; and, depending on the site, an arboricultural report, a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy, a heritage statement, a transport or parking statement, a daylight and sunlight assessment, an ecology or biodiversity assessment, and any others the specific site calls for. On a larger scheme the suite of reports grows. Everything is prepared to be internally consistent, so the drawings, the calculations and the statements all tell the same story.

Validation is the gate every application has to pass before the council will even consider its merits. Barnet publishes a validation checklist — the national requirements that apply everywhere, plus the council's own local requirements — and for a new dwelling the drawings and technical documents make up the largest part of it. If a required drawing or report is missing, drawn to the wrong scale, or fails the presentation rules, the application is invalid and goes nowhere until it is fixed. A large proportion of the delays applicants suffer are self-inflicted validation failures, and on a new build — with its longer list of required documents — there is more that can go wrong.

For a new dwelling, Barnet's requirements typically include: the completed application forms and the correct fee; a location plan and a site plan; existing drawings where a building is being demolished; proposed floor plans, elevations, sections and a roof plan; and — depending on the scheme — a Design and Access Statement, a planning statement, an arboricultural report and tree survey, a flood risk assessment and drainage strategy, a sustainability or energy statement, a heritage statement in sensitive areas, a transport or parking statement, and biodiversity or daylight/sunlight information. The exact list depends on the site and the scale, which is why establishing the requirements early is part of the job.

The presentation rules are specific and strictly applied: drawings to a recognised metric scale (1:50 or 1:100 is usual for plans, elevations and sections), with a scale bar and north point, properly titled and numbered, without a 'do not scale' caveat, and — for electronic submission through the Planning Portal — as named PDFs within the file-size limits. The location plan must be on an up-to-date Ordnance Survey base showing at least two named roads, with the site edged in red and other land in the same ownership edged in blue. These are exactly the details that get an application bounced back before it is even registered.

We prepare every set to Barnet's checklist, treat the local requirements as seriously as the national ones, and sense-check the whole package before submission so that it validates first time. Because we submit new-build applications to Barnet and the neighbouring boroughs regularly, we know the practical points the validation team looks for and the reports each type of site needs — and we would far rather spend a little extra care up front than lose the client weeks to an avoidable rejection before the statutory clock has even started.

The process starts with feasibility. We survey the site — its levels, boundaries, trees and context — establish its planning designation (suburban street, conservation area, green belt or open land), check its planning history, and work out what the plot can realistically take against the London Plan and Barnet's Local Plan. We then produce initial design options and test them against the space, character, amenity and technical standards. This is where we give you an honest view of whether a new dwelling is achievable on the site, and in what form, before you commit to a full set of drawings — which on a constrained or green-belt site can save a great deal of wasted effort.

Barnet offers pre-application advice, and on a new dwelling — which is judged in the round and often raises questions of character, amenity, trees and design — it is frequently worth using. A written steer from the council on your proposal reduces the risk of a refusal, flags concerns early, and shows the eventual case officer that the scheme has been developed thoughtfully in response to the council's guidance. On backland, infill in a sensitive street, replacement dwellings and anything near the green belt or a conservation area, a pre-application response can be genuinely decisive. We prepare and manage the pre-application submission where it adds value.

We then prepare the full drawing package and the supporting documents, submit the application to Barnet through the Planning Portal, and manage it through validation and determination — dealing with the validation team's checks, responding to the case officer's queries and any consultee comments, addressing neighbour representations, and negotiating amendments where that will secure approval. A single new dwelling (a minor application) runs against an eight-week target from validation; a major scheme of ten or more homes runs against a thirteen-week target and may be referred to the Mayor. Contested schemes can take longer, and some go to committee rather than being decided by officers.

Once permission is granted, we take the scheme forward into the Building Regulations and construction drawings, discharge any pre-commencement conditions, and prepare the structural, services and detailed information your builder needs on site. Because the same coordinated team designed the home, resolved its structure and services, and won the consent, the transition from a granted planning drawing to a buildable construction set is smooth rather than a fresh start — which is one of the biggest practical advantages of a single-practice service on a new build.

Understanding why applications fail is the best way to make sure yours does not, and for new dwellings in Barnet the failures split into two kinds. The first, and most avoidable, is invalidation: the application never reaches the merits because a required drawing or report is missing, a drawing is at the wrong scale or marked 'do not scale', the location plan lacks named roads, or a needed report (an arboricultural survey, a flood risk assessment) has not been provided. These are pure preparation failures, and a properly assembled, checklist-led set eliminates them.

The second kind is refusal on the merits, and on new build in a suburban borough the reasons are fairly predictable. The biggest is harm to character and to the pattern of the area — a new home that breaks the building line, is out of scale with its neighbours, fills a gap the street's spacious character depends on, or represents overdevelopment of a plot (too much building, too little garden, cramped and contrived). Barnet's design policies and its Residential Design Guidance are written precisely to resist this, so a scheme that does not fit its street is on difficult ground from the start.

Harm to neighbours' living conditions is the next major theme: a new dwelling that overlooks neighbouring gardens and windows, that overshadows or dominates them (a loss of light or an overbearing impact), or that sits too close to a boundary. Loss of protected or important trees, inadequate parking or refuse and cycle provision, poor internal quality (rooms below the space standards, single-aspect or poorly lit homes), and unresolved drainage or flood risk are all recurring refusal reasons. And on the green belt or Metropolitan Open Land, a new dwelling that harms openness is refused almost as a matter of course.

Our approach is to anticipate every one of these reasons and answer it in the application itself — designing to the street's character and scale, protecting neighbours' privacy and light, keeping the trees that matter, meeting the space and amenity standards, resolving parking, refuse, cycles and drainage, and — where the site is designated — being realistic about what the green belt or a conservation area will allow. We are honest with you at feasibility if a plot cannot take a good new home or sits somewhere a new dwelling will be resisted, because there is no value in submitting an application designed to fail.

The cost of new build planning drawings in Barnet depends on the size and complexity of the home and how much of the full package you need — from a single, straightforward infill house on a benign suburban plot, through a replacement dwelling, to a small block of flats or a constrained backland or green-belt site with a full suite of technical reports. We scope the work to your specific project and give you a clear, fixed fee for our part before any drawing work begins, so you know what you are committing to. On a new build that fixed fee typically covers the survey, the design, the planning drawings and the supporting statements, with the structural and building-services design and the construction package quoted alongside.

Separate from our fee, you should budget for several other costs. The council's planning application fee is set nationally and payable to Barnet on submission — the fee for a new dwelling is higher than a householder fee and rises with the number of homes. You should also budget for the specialist reports a new build needs (arboricultural survey, flood risk and drainage, ground investigation, ecology, daylight/sunlight, and so on), for any pre-application advice fee, and for the Community Infrastructure Levy on the new floorspace, which — at around £300 per square metre for Barnet's residential rate plus the Mayoral CIL, indexed each year — is a significant sum on a whole new home. We set all of this out at the start so there are no surprises.

On timescales, the survey and design stage for a new dwelling typically takes several weeks — longer than a conversion, because there is a whole building to design and a fuller set of reports to commission — and pre-application advice, if used, adds a few weeks. The application itself runs against an eight-week target from validation for a single dwelling, or thirteen weeks for a major scheme, with contested cases and committee decisions taking longer. Getting the drawings and the reports right so the application validates first time is one of the most effective ways to keep the whole programme on track — a bounced application can add weeks before the statutory clock even starts.

It is worth remembering that on a new build, good drawings and proper design are not where money is lost — money is lost on refusals, on redesigns forced by a structure or services that were never coordinated, on a home that turns out to be far more expensive to build than the drawings implied, and on a scheme that has to be scaled back on appeal. Getting the design, the structure, the services, the energy and the drainage right from the outset, to a standard that validates, answers the council's tests and can be built to a budget, is the most cost-effective way to bring a new dwelling in Barnet from a plot to a finished home.

To make the process concrete, consider a common Barnet scenario: a family with a large corner plot in Finchley, occupied by a single inter-war house set in a generous garden, who want to build a second, self-contained house alongside it on part of the plot. It is exactly the kind of infill opportunity Barnet's plots throw up, and exactly the kind of scheme that succeeds or fails on how carefully it is designed against the character of the street and the amenity of the neighbours.

At feasibility we survey the plot — its levels, boundaries and, crucially, its trees — and test what it can take. The central questions are whether a new house can sit on the plot while keeping a sensible gap to both the existing house and the side boundary, whether it can match the street's building line and scale, and whether it can be given a proper garden and its own access without harming the neighbours. We check the existing house is left with adequate amenity too, because subdividing a plot must not leave the original home cramped. We give the family an honest view: the plot is generous enough for a modest house that respects the street, but not for the larger home they first imagined.

The design responds to the street. We set the new house on the established building line, keep its ridge and eaves in line with its neighbours, echo the local roof form and materials, and hold a comfortable gap to the boundary so the spacious rhythm of the street is preserved. Inside, the plan is designed to the space standards with dual-aspect habitable rooms, good light and proper storage, and the windows are placed to look out without overlooking the neighbours' gardens or windows. The garden, the parking, a screened bin store and a secure cycle store are all designed in, and the important trees are retained with the house set outside their root protection areas.

The structure, services and energy design follow from the layout, coordinated with the architecture from the start. The foundations are designed for Barnet's clay and the nearby trees; the home is designed to the Future Homes Standard with good fabric, a heat pump and solar panels; the ventilation and drainage (with SuDS suited to the clay) are built in; and the whole thing is designed to be genuinely buildable. Where the new house sits near the boundary, we flag the Party Wall Act early. The result is a planning layout that is also a real, deliverable building.

On the planning side we prepare the full set — location plan, site plan, existing (retained house) context, and proposed plans, elevations and sections, with room areas annotated and a street-scene elevation showing the new house sitting comfortably among its neighbours — plus a Design and Access Statement and a planning statement that meet Barnet's character, amenity and housing policies head-on, an arboricultural report protecting the trees, and a drainage strategy. Submitted through the Planning Portal, drawn to validate first time and argued against the council's policies, a scheme like this goes in as a proposal the case officer can recommend for approval — which is the difference between a new dwelling designed to succeed and one that is simply hoped through.

A grant of planning permission for a new dwelling rarely comes without conditions, and on a new build there are usually more of them than on a smaller project. Conditions are requirements attached to the consent that must be met — some before work starts (pre-commencement), some before the home is occupied, and some on an ongoing basis — and failing to comply with them can put the lawful development at risk. Knowing what to expect means they can be discharged smoothly rather than becoming a stumbling block later.

Common conditions on a Barnet new dwelling include a requirement to build in accordance with the approved drawings (which is why an accurate, complete set matters after approval as well as before), the approval of materials and external finishes before they are used, the submission and approval of detailed drainage and SuDS designs, tree-protection measures during construction and a landscaping scheme, details of the boundary treatments and the refuse and cycle stores, a construction management plan controlling how the site is run, and — increasingly — conditions securing the energy and sustainability performance, electric-vehicle charging and the removal of certain permitted-development rights so the council keeps control of future changes.

Some conditions require details to be submitted and approved before work starts or before occupation — the materials, the drainage design, the tree protection, the landscaping. These are each discharged by a short further application to the council providing the required information, and on a new build it pays to programme them in so they do not hold up the start on site. We flag the onerous conditions when the decision arrives and can prepare the discharge submissions, and because we design the scheme with the likely conditions in mind, the conditions Barnet attaches are generally ones the scheme already meets.

The practical message is that the planning consent is the beginning of a compliant new build, not the whole of it: the conditions, the Building Regulations approval, the CIL procedure and any Party Wall awards all have to line up before and during construction. A new dwelling is a bigger, longer project than an extension or a conversion, and staying on top of these parallel processes is part of delivering it well — which is why we stay involved from the consent through to completion rather than handing over a set of drawings and stepping away.

Crown Architecture designs new dwellings across Barnet and the surrounding boroughs, and we do it as a single coordinated service: the measured and topographical survey, the planning design and drawings, the structural engineering and the building services under one roof. That matters on a new build more than almost any other project type, because a new home is a complete building in which the architecture, the structure, the services, the energy strategy and the drainage are completely interdependent — design them separately and they clash and the costs spiral; design them together and the home you submit for planning is genuinely buildable and buildable to a budget.

We know the Barnet regime: the adopted Local Plan (March 2025) and its housing, design and character policies your application will be judged against; the council's Residential Design Guidance and the separation, amenity and space standards it applies; the London Plan's density, quality and energy requirements; the borough's sixteen conservation areas and its Article 4 Directions; and — critically for the northern and western fringes — the strict green-belt and Metropolitan Open Land protection that decides whether a new home is possible at all. We use that knowledge to give you honest advice at feasibility and to build applications designed to pass.

Just as importantly, we are straightforward to work with. We tell you early and honestly whether a plot can take a good new home and in what form, we quote a clear fixed fee, and we prepare a coordinated, self-consistent package that a validation team registers first time and a case officer can approve without having to fill in the gaps. We design to the Future Homes Standard so the home is genuinely low-carbon and future-proofed, and we design the structure and services alongside the architecture so the transition to construction is seamless.

We also stay with the project from the first survey to a finished home. We manage the application through Barnet's validation and determination, respond to the case officer and to neighbours, negotiate amendments where that will secure approval, and — once consent is granted — discharge the conditions, prepare the structural, services and construction drawings, handle the Building Regulations, and see the home through to completion. The aim is a single, accountable point of contact for the whole of a new dwelling, rather than a set of drawings handed over and a client left to navigate the council, the engineer, the energy assessor and the builder alone.

If you are considering building a new home in Barnet — an infill house, a home in the garden, a replacement dwelling or a small block of flats — send us the address and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly what is achievable on the site, by which route, and how to get there.