New Build Plans in Croydon

A new build, in planning and building-regulations terms, is the creation of a completely new dwelling: a new house on a plot, a new flat block, a home replacing one that is demolished, or an additional home carved out of a garden or backland site. It is different in kind from an extension or a conversion, because you are not altering an existing building — you are introducing a whole new one, with its own address, its own foundations, its own drainage connection and its own compliance with the full body of national law and local policy. That is why new build plans are a much larger undertaking than most home improvement drawings.

'New build plans' is really shorthand for two connected sets of drawings. The first is the planning package — the site plan, floor plans, elevations and supporting documents that persuade Croydon Council to grant permission for a new home in that location, at that size, in that design. The second is the technical package — the building-regulations, structural and services drawings and calculations that make the building safe, warm, watertight and actually buildable. A good new-build project treats these as one continuous process, so the house you get permission for is the same house you can build.

The people who come to us for new build plans in Croydon are varied. Homeowners with a large garden who want to build a home for a family member, or sell a serviced plot. Investors and small developers who have bought a bungalow, a wide corner plot, or a backland strip with the intention of replacing or intensifying it. Families who want to knock down a dated house and build a modern, energy-efficient replacement on the same footprint. Landowners exploring whether a plot can take one home or several. In every case the first job is the same: work out honestly what the site, the policy and the neighbours will support.

Whatever the plot, the disciplines are the same. Confirm that planning permission is needed and by which route; design a home that meets Croydon's and the London Plan's standards for size, layout, light, amenity and character; design the structure, drainage, services and energy strategy to be buildable and compliant; budget for the Community Infrastructure Levy and any obligations; and prepare a coordinated, self-consistent set of drawings that a case officer can approve and a builder can build. The rest of this page walks through each of those in turn, for this borough specifically.

Croydon is an ancient place with a surprisingly deep history for a borough so associated with modern towers and suburban sprawl. It began as a Saxon and medieval settlement recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086, and for over five centuries it was closely tied to the Archbishops of Canterbury, who kept a summer residence here — the surviving Old Palace, near Croydon Minster, is one of the most important historic buildings in south London. Nearby, Archbishop John Whitgift founded his hospital of the Holy Trinity — Whitgift's almshouses — in 1596 to house elderly local residents, and it still stands in the town centre. Surrey Street holds one of the oldest street markets in Britain, trading under charters going back to the thirteenth century.

Croydon also has a unique place in aviation history. Croydon Airport was Britain's principal international airport between the wars, pioneering scheduled passenger flights and the world's first air traffic control, before it was overtaken by larger airfields and closed to scheduled flights in 1959. Its terminal survives as a listed building and museum on the southern edge of the borough, and the surrounding Roundshaw estate was built on the old runways — a reminder that Croydon has been reinventing its land for new homes for the best part of a century. In the mid-twentieth century the town centre was massively redeveloped, and the Whitgift Centre became for a time the largest covered shopping centre in Greater London.

For a new-build scheme, what matters most is the borough's housing stock and geography, because that is what your home has to sit within. The central area around East Croydon is a high-density, high-rise regeneration zone. But most of Croydon is suburban: leafy interwar and post-war estates in Shirley, Addiscombe, Selsdon, Sanderstead, Purley and Coulsdon to the south; denser Victorian and Edwardian streets to the north around Thornton Heath, South Norwood and Norbury; and the green fringes towards the North Downs. This is a borough of semi-detached and detached houses on generous plots, mature gardens, and wide roads — precisely the pattern that generates windfall opportunities for new homes, and precisely the character that the council's design policies exist to protect.

That combination of large plots and protective policy is the defining tension of new-build in Croydon. There is a great deal of underused land — big gardens, wide corner plots, redundant bungalows, backland behind the main roads — and the borough needs the homes. But the suburbs also value their character strongly, and neighbours are quick to object to development they see as cramming, overlooking or out of scale. A successful new home threads that needle: it uses the land well enough to be worth building, and respects the street well enough to be consented. Understanding which part of the borough your plot sits in, and what that area's character and policy expect, is the starting point for every design we produce.

The single most important thing to understand about new build plans is that creating a new dwelling almost always requires full planning permission. Permitted development rights — the rules that let you build many extensions, outbuildings and some changes of use without a full application — do not extend to building a brand-new, separate home. You cannot 'permitted-develop' a new house into a garden, and you cannot subdivide a plot and build a second dwelling under permitted development. The creation of a new dwellinghouse is expressly the kind of development that needs to be applied for and judged on its planning merits.

This matters because it sets the whole tone of the project. A full planning application is assessed against the entire development plan — the Croydon Local Plan, the London Plan, and any relevant supplementary guidance — not a narrow list of technical matters as a prior approval would be. That means design, scale, massing, density, the impact on neighbours, highways and parking, trees and biodiversity, drainage, and the character of the area are all in play. It is a more demanding test than an extension, but it is also an opportunity: a genuinely well-designed new home, argued against the right policies, can win permission even where the plot is tight or sensitive.

There are a few nuances worth knowing. A replacement dwelling — knocking down one house and building another — still needs full planning permission for the new house, even though the site is already residential; the council will weigh the replacement against the original and against the street. Demolition of the existing building may itself need a separate 'prior approval for demolition' where it is not exempt, and demolition in a conservation area is more tightly controlled. And on rare larger sites, outline planning permission (establishing the principle of development with details reserved for later) can be a useful first step. But for the ordinary new home, the route is a full, detailed planning application, and that is what we prepare.

The practical consequence is that feasibility comes first and matters enormously. Before any client spends money on a full set of drawings, we assess the plot honestly: is the principle of a new home here likely to be acceptable, given the site's size, its relationship to neighbours, the character of the street, any trees, flood risk or highways constraints, and the council's current policy stance? Croydon offers pre-application advice, and on a marginal plot it is often worth paying for a written steer from the council before committing. We tell you plainly whether a plot is a strong candidate, a marginal one, or a non-starter — because there is no value in designing an application that cannot succeed.

A new-build application in Croydon is judged against the Croydon Local Plan, adopted in 2018, alongside the London Plan and the National Planning Policy Framework. The Local Plan set out an ambitious housing trajectory — a target in the order of thirty-three thousand new homes over the plan period — and it expected a large share of those to come from small 'windfall' sites in the suburbs: garden land, backland, redevelopment of individual plots and infill. That means the council's policy framework is genuinely open to new suburban homes in principle; the battle is almost always over design, scale and impact rather than the bare principle of a new dwelling.

The Local Plan's design policies require new development to respond to the character of its surroundings — the prevailing pattern of plots, building lines, heights, roof forms, gaps between buildings, front gardens and boundary treatments — while still making efficient use of land. Croydon has a strong tradition of 'suburban' character areas, and the plan expects a new home to read as a natural part of its street rather than an alien insertion. Density is not judged by a crude units-per-hectare figure but by whether the proposed form is appropriate: the London Plan's design-led approach (Policy D3) asks whether the scheme optimises the site's capacity through good design, in a way that suits its context and transport accessibility, rather than simply maximising numbers.

Amenity is the other recurring theme, and it is where suburban new-builds most often run into trouble. The council protects the living conditions of existing neighbours — their daylight and sunlight, their privacy, their outlook — and it expects the new home itself to provide good amenity for its own occupiers. That means respecting minimum separation distances between windows to avoid overlooking, avoiding overbearing or overshadowing masses close to boundaries, providing usable private amenity space (a garden or terrace) for the new home, and keeping enough garden retained for the existing house on a subdivided plot. A design that harms neighbours' amenity, or that leaves the new home dark and hemmed in, will be refused however clever it is on paper.

Croydon's recent history here is instructive and it directly affects your scheme. In 2019 the council adopted a Suburban Design Guide, a detailed supplementary planning document intended to steer the wave of suburban densification — extensions, infill, backland and replacement homes — that its housing target was driving. It proved controversial, was blamed by residents for enabling overdevelopment, and the council formally revoked it on 26 July 2022, so it is no longer used to determine applications. The lesson for a new-build client is twofold: the borough remains committed to suburban housing delivery, but it is now acutely sensitive to the charge of overdevelopment, so a scheme has to demonstrate real design quality and genuine respect for its street rather than relying on a permissive guidance document that no longer exists.

A new home in Croydon must meet the nationally described space standard, the government's minimum internal floor areas that the London Plan applies through its housing quality policy (Policy D6). This is not optional guidance for a new-build in London — it is a policy requirement, and a scheme that proposes undersized homes will be refused or forced to reduce its unit count. The standard sets a minimum gross internal floor area for every dwelling by the number of bedrooms and occupants, and it sets minimum sizes for bedrooms and minimum built-in storage on top.

The headline figures are worth knowing at the design stage, because they discipline the whole plan. A one-bedroom, one-person home must be at least 37 square metres (39 where it has a bathroom rather than a shower room); a one-bedroom, two-person home at least 50 square metres; a two-bedroom, four-person home at least 70 square metres on one storey or 79 on two; and a three-bedroom, five-person house at least 93 square metres over two storeys (99 over three). Double bedrooms must be at least 11.5 square metres, single bedrooms at least 7.5, and every home needs a defined amount of built-in storage. These are floors, not targets — a good family home is usually comfortably above them.

The London Plan adds further quality requirements that shape a new home's layout. It expects homes to be dual-aspect wherever practical (windows on more than one side, for light and ventilation and to avoid single-aspect north-facing units), sets minimum floor-to-ceiling heights, requires private outdoor space of a minimum size for each home, and expects a proportion of homes to be accessible and adaptable (built to Part M4(2) of the Building Regulations), with a share of larger schemes wheelchair-accessible (M4(3)). On family homes the mix of sizes also matters — Croydon's plan seeks a supply of three-bedroom-plus family homes in suitable locations, so on a plot that can take one it is often the right thing to build.

Designing to these standards from the first sketch is what separates a home that is approved and pleasant to live in from one that is refused or cramped. It is tempting to draw the largest footprint the plot will physically take and then divide it up, but that is backwards: we start from compliant, well-lit, well-proportioned rooms and work outwards to a footprint and massing that the street and the neighbours will accept. On a subdivided or backland plot, the space standard often decides how many homes the site can really take — usually fewer, and better, than a naive layout suggests.

A very common Croydon new-build is the replacement dwelling — demolishing a dated bungalow or a tired inter-war house and building a modern, larger, more efficient home in its place. Because the site is already in residential use, the principle of a house here is normally accepted, so the planning debate is about the design, scale and impact of the new home rather than whether a home should exist. That makes replacement dwellings one of the more reliable new-build routes in the borough, provided the replacement is well judged.

The council will compare the proposed replacement with the existing house and with the pattern of the street. The most common friction points are scale and massing: a replacement that is markedly taller, wider, deeper or bulkier than the house it replaces, or than its neighbours, can be refused as overdevelopment or as harmful to the character of the street, even on a plot that already has a home. A replacement that fills far more of the plot, reduces the gaps to the boundaries that give a suburban street its rhythm, or introduces overlooking or overshadowing that the modest original did not, will meet resistance. The art is to build a genuinely better and usually larger home while keeping it a natural fit for its street.

Demolition itself needs handling correctly. Outside a conservation area, the demolition of a house is generally either exempt or a matter of 'prior approval for the method of demolition' rather than a full application, but you still cannot start until the new build has full planning permission — demolishing first and applying later is a serious mistake. In a conservation area, and for any locally or nationally listed building, demolition is far more tightly controlled and may be resisted altogether. We check the site's designations at the outset so the demolition and the rebuild are sequenced lawfully.

A replacement dwelling is also the ideal opportunity to build to a genuinely high standard, because you are starting from a clean slate. A new replacement home can be designed to modern space standards, to be dual-aspect and full of light, to meet the accessibility standards, and — importantly — to be far more energy-efficient than the draughty original, taking it a long way towards the Future Homes Standard. We design replacement dwellings as complete, coordinated projects: a home that is better to live in, cheaper to run, and a good neighbour, argued through planning on exactly those merits.

Much of Croydon's new-build potential lies in its gardens and backland — the long rear gardens of suburban houses, the wide corner plots, the strips of land behind the main-road frontages, and the gaps between buildings. The borough's housing strategy has explicitly relied on these small 'windfall' sites to deliver a large part of its target, so there is genuine policy support for building on them. But they are also the most contested form of development in the suburbs, and 'garden-grabbing' — building homes on the back gardens of existing houses — is a live and sensitive issue that neighbours and councillors watch closely.

National policy allows councils to resist inappropriate residential development of gardens where it would harm the character of an area, and Croydon uses that discretion. A garden or backland scheme has to overcome several specific hurdles: it must not create a 'cramped' or 'town-cramming' form of development out of keeping with the spacious suburban pattern; it must provide safe, adequate access to the new home, often the hardest problem on a landlocked backland plot; it must protect the amenity of the surrounding houses whose gardens now back onto a new building; it must keep a reasonable garden for the original house; and it must deal with trees, which are frequently the reason a garden plot cannot be developed as drawn.

Access is the single biggest practical constraint on backland sites. A home tucked behind existing houses needs a way in for people, cars, refuse and emergency vehicles, and that access strip eats into the developable area and can generate overlooking and noise for the houses it passes. Highways requirements for visibility splays and turning, refuse-collection distances, and fire-service access all bear on whether a backland plot works at all. We test the access first on any backland instruction, because a plot that cannot be reached properly cannot be built, however attractive the rest of it looks.

Trees and biodiversity are the other frequent deal-breaker and a growing one. Mature suburban gardens are often full of protected or high-amenity trees, and a scheme that requires felling important trees, or that puts a new home inside the root protection area of a tree that must be kept, will struggle. Since biodiversity net gain became mandatory for most developments, a new home must also demonstrate a measurable net gain for nature, which affects the landscaping and the balance of hard and soft surfaces. We commission arboricultural and ecological input early on garden and backland plots so the design respects the trees and the ecology from the start rather than being redrawn around them later.

A new home is a complete structure that has to stand up, resist the wind, carry its floors and roof, and transfer every load safely into the ground — and unlike an extension it cannot lean on an existing building. That makes the structural design a first-order part of new build plans, not an afterthought, and it is one of the reasons Crown designs the structure and the architecture together. The frame, the floors, the roof and above all the foundations have to be designed for this specific building on this specific plot.

Foundations are where a new-build in Croydon most needs local knowledge. The borough spans very different ground: the chalk and clay of the North Downs to the south around Coulsdon and Purley, London Clay across much of the centre and north, and areas of made ground on former industrial or airport land. Clay soils shrink and swell with moisture and are strongly influenced by nearby trees, which is a real issue on the leafy suburban and garden plots where new homes are most often built — foundations frequently have to be deepened, or designed as piles or a raft, to cope with clay heave and tree influence. A ground investigation is almost always worth doing early, because it drives the foundation design and a large part of the cost.

Above ground, the structural design chooses and sizes the building's frame — traditional masonry cavity walls with timber or engineered joists, a timber frame, a steel frame, or increasingly a modern method such as structural insulated panels or cross-laminated timber for a low-carbon build. The choice affects the speed of construction, the wall thicknesses, the insulation strategy and the cost, and it has to be coordinated with the architecture so that the structure and the appearance work together. Openings, spans, cantilevers, upper floors and the roof all need designing and calculating, and where the design is ambitious — large glazed openings, open-plan spaces, a basement — the engineering becomes central.

Because we design the structure in-house alongside the architecture, the new build plans we submit are structurally coherent from the outset. The spans work, the walls line through, the foundations suit the ground, and the technical package that follows planning is a development of the same design rather than a re-engineering of it. That integration matters more on a new build than on almost any other project, because everything is new and everything depends on the structure being right.

A new home needs a complete set of building services — the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems that make it warm, lit, ventilated, supplied with hot and cold water and drained — designed from scratch. There is nothing to reuse, so the services strategy is part of the design from the beginning, and it interacts heavily with the energy strategy, the structure and the layout. Crown coordinates the services with the architecture and structure so that risers, plant, pipe and cable routes are planned into the building rather than squeezed in afterwards.

Heating and hot water are the biggest single decision, and the direction of travel is decisively away from gas. Under the coming Future Homes Standard, new homes are expected to be built without fossil-fuel heating, so most new-build plans now specify an air-source heat pump (occasionally ground-source on a suitable plot), a hot-water cylinder, and low-temperature emitters such as underfloor heating or larger radiators sized to run efficiently at heat-pump temperatures. Designing for a heat pump affects the whole building — the insulation levels, the airtightness, the plant location and its acoustics, and the space for a cylinder — which is exactly why it belongs in the plans from the start.

Ventilation is the counterpart to a well-insulated, airtight new home: build it tight and you must ventilate it right, or you get condensation, mould and poor air quality. Approved Document F of the Building Regulations governs ventilation, and a modern airtight house usually needs either continuous mechanical extract ventilation or, for the best performance, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR), which recovers warmth from the outgoing air. The ductwork for these systems has to be routed through the structure, so it is coordinated at design stage alongside the electrical distribution, the incoming utilities, and the drainage.

The remaining services — electrical layout, lighting, an electric-vehicle charge point (now generally required for a new home with parking), water supply and metering, and the internal drainage that connects to the foul and surface-water systems outside — all have to be designed and coordinated. On a new build there is also freedom to do this well: to design in future-proofing such as generous electrical capacity for heat pumps and EV charging, solar photovoltaic panels on the roof, and battery storage. We plan the services so the finished home is comfortable, efficient and ready for the low-carbon standards the building must meet.

Every new home must demonstrate compliance with Part L of the Building Regulations — the conservation of fuel and power — and this is a formal, calculated process, not a matter of good intentions. A new dwelling's energy performance is assessed using the government's Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP), which models the home's fabric, heating, hot water, ventilation and any renewables to produce its predicted carbon emissions and energy use, and generates the Energy Performance Certificate. A SAP assessment is done at design stage to prove compliance on paper and again on completion to confirm the home was actually built to that standard.

The standard is tightening sharply, and any new-build client needs to plan for it. The Future Homes Standard is the government's next revision of the energy Building Regulations, intended to ensure new homes are 'zero-carbon ready' — built with very high fabric performance and low-carbon heating so that, as the electricity grid decarbonises, the home's emissions fall to near zero. It is being introduced through an updated Part L, with a transitional period, and in practice it means new homes built without gas boilers, heated by heat pumps, very well insulated and airtight, and typically fitted with solar photovoltaic panels. The interim SAP methodology (SAP 10.3) already values low-carbon electricity far more highly than earlier versions did, which changes the sums in favour of heat pumps and solar.

For your plans, the practical implications are concrete. Expect tighter fabric standards — better-insulated walls, roofs and floors, high-performance triple or good double glazing, and much lower air leakage — which affect wall build-ups and detailing and therefore the architecture. Expect a heat pump rather than a gas boiler, with the space, plant and emitter design that implies. Expect solar panels on the roof for most homes, which affects the roof design and orientation. And expect careful attention to thermal bridging and airtightness detailing, because a home that is designed well but built loosely will fail its completion SAP.

The upside is significant and worth designing for deliberately. A new home built to these standards is dramatically cheaper to run and far more comfortable than the housing stock it sits among, and building to the emerging standard now future-proofs the home against tightening rules and rising energy prices. We design the fabric, the services and the renewables together so the SAP works, the home is genuinely low-energy in use, and the details that make or break real-world performance are drawn properly rather than left to chance on site.

A new home has to deal with two kinds of water — the foul drainage from its bathrooms and kitchen, and the surface water that runs off its roofs and paving — and both have to be designed and, on many sites, approved. Foul drainage normally connects to the public sewer, and where the connection is difficult (a backland plot far from the main, or a fall in the wrong direction) it can need pumping, which is a design and cost issue to identify early. New connections to the public system are agreed with the water and sewerage undertaker, and the internal drainage is part of the building-regulations design.

Surface water is the more policy-sensitive of the two, because London and Croydon both push hard for sustainable drainage. The London Plan sets a drainage hierarchy that expects new development to manage rainwater as close to source as possible and to avoid simply piping it into the sewer, which contributes to flooding downstream. In practice a new home is expected to incorporate sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) — permeable paving, soakaways, rain gardens, water butts, green roofs or attenuation tanks — sized to restrict the rate at which water leaves the site, ideally back towards the rate before the site was built on.

Whether the site sits in a flood-risk area also drives the design. Croydon has watercourses and areas of surface-water flood risk, and a plot within a flood zone, or above a certain size, needs a flood risk assessment demonstrating that the new home is safe and does not worsen flooding elsewhere — through finished floor levels, resilient construction, and compensatory measures where necessary. We check the Environment Agency and lead local flood authority mapping at feasibility, because flood risk can change what and how much can be built, or require specific design responses.

Getting drainage right early avoids one of the classic new-build problems: a design that works on the plan but has nowhere for its water to go. Ground conditions matter here too — soakaways only work where the ground drains, and Croydon's clay areas often will not, forcing attenuation and controlled discharge instead. We design the drainage and SuDS as part of the layout, coordinate them with the levels, the foundations and the landscaping, and prepare the drainage strategy the council and the drainage authority need to see.

Many Croydon new-builds begin with taking something down — a bungalow, an old house, garages or outbuildings — and demolition has its own rules. You must not demolish before the new build has planning permission, and depending on the building and its location you may need to give the council notice of demolition or obtain prior approval for the method of demolition, covering how the site will be cleared, made safe and restored. In a conservation area, and for any listed or locally listed building, demolition is tightly controlled and needs specific consent, and may be resisted. We establish the correct demolition route and sequence it with the planning permission so nothing is done unlawfully.

Where the plot adjoins other properties — as almost every Croydon plot does — the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 is likely to apply. Building a new wall on or up to the boundary, excavating for foundations within three metres of a neighbour's building (or six metres in some cases where the excavation is deep), or otherwise working close to a neighbouring structure triggers a duty to serve formal party wall notices on the affected neighbours and, if they do not consent, to appoint surveyors to agree an award. This is a legal process separate from planning and building regulations, and it protects both you and your neighbours; on a tight suburban plot it is almost always engaged, and it needs building into the programme.

Beyond the formal party wall process, good neighbour management is genuinely worth the effort on a suburban new-build, because objections drive so many refusals. Neighbours worry about overlooking, loss of light, noise and disruption during construction, damage to boundaries and trees, and parking. A design that visibly respects their amenity — sensible window positions, adequate separation, retained boundary planting — and early, honest communication about the build both reduce the risk of objection and make the whole project smoother. We design with the neighbours' concerns in mind precisely because it improves the odds of a clean consent.

Construction management is the last piece. A new-build site in a residential street has to be run considerately: access and deliveries planned so they do not block the road, hours of work respected, dust and mud controlled, trees protected behind proper fencing, and boundaries safeguarded. Where the council requires it, a construction logistics or method statement may be conditioned on the permission. Thinking about how the home will actually be built — and how the site interacts with its neighbours during the build — is part of designing it well, not a detail to leave to the contractor alone.

A new home in Croydon almost always attracts the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) — a charge, calculated per square metre, that developments pay towards the infrastructure that supports growth. CIL applies to the net additional floorspace you create, and for a new dwelling that is generally the whole of the new floor area (less any lawful floorspace being demolished that qualifies for offset). Croydon charges its own Borough CIL, and because the site is in Greater London the Mayoral CIL also applies, so a new-build typically pays both. The Borough CIL rate varies by the type of development and the location within a set of charging zones, and both charges are index-linked, so they rise over time.

The numbers matter to a new-build budget and should be worked out early. Croydon's Borough CIL for residential development is set at a per-square-metre rate that differs by zone across the borough, and the Mayoral CIL adds a further per-square-metre charge on top; both are adjusted annually for inflation using a construction index. On a single house the combined CIL can run to several thousand pounds, and on a multi-home scheme it can be a substantial figure, so it belongs in the appraisal from the outset rather than as a surprise after permission is granted.

There is an important relief that many private clients qualify for: self-build exemption. If you are building a new home to occupy as your own main residence, you can apply for full exemption from both the Borough and Mayoral CIL, provided you follow the strict procedure — claiming the exemption and getting it granted before you start work, submitting a commencement notice before building begins, and then living in the home for at least three years, with supporting evidence. Missing a step in this process can lose the exemption and leave you liable for the full charge, so it has to be handled carefully and in the right order. We flag self-build eligibility and the procedure at the start for clients building their own home.

Larger schemes may also face planning obligations under a Section 106 agreement — for affordable housing above the relevant threshold, or to secure specific mitigation such as highway works or contributions. A single new home is usually below the affordable-housing threshold, but a scheme of several homes can engage it, and the interaction between CIL and Section 106 needs handling so you are not double-charged for the same infrastructure. We set out the likely CIL, any obligations, and the reliefs available so the financial picture is clear before you commit to the application.

A new-build project runs through a recognised sequence of design stages, and we structure our work around the RIBA Plan of Work so you always know what has been done and what comes next. It begins with feasibility (RIBA Stage 0-1): the site survey, the ground and constraints check, the policy assessment, and an honest appraisal of what the plot can support. This is where the fundamental questions — one home or several, replacement or new plot, footprint and height — are settled before serious money is spent, and where we recommend whether pre-application advice from the council is worthwhile.

Concept and developed design (RIBA Stages 2-3) produce the scheme itself and the planning application. The drawing package for a new home normally includes an accurate site survey and location plan, a proposed site plan showing the new home in its plot with access, parking, refuse, cycle storage and amenity space, and the proposed floor plans, elevations and sections with rooms and floor areas annotated so the council can check them against the space standard. Alongside the drawings we prepare the supporting documents the application needs — commonly a design and access statement, and, depending on the site, arboricultural, ecological (including biodiversity net gain), flood risk and drainage, and transport or parking assessments.

Technical design (RIBA Stage 4) turns the consented scheme into a buildable one: the building-regulations drawings and specification, the structural design and calculations for foundations, frame, floors and roof, the drainage design, the SAP energy assessment and the services design. This is the package your building-control body needs to approve the work and your contractor needs to price and build it. Because we prepare it as a development of the same design that won planning — not a fresh start — it is coordinated and consistent, and it carries the fire-safety, structural and energy thinking that was in the scheme from the beginning.

The value of taking one team through all of these stages is coherence. The floor areas on the planning drawings match the space-standard schedule; the structure on the building-regs drawings matches the architecture that was approved; the drainage matches the levels; the SAP matches the fabric drawn. A new build assembled from separate, uncoordinated packages is where the expensive surprises live; a single, self-consistent set of new build plans is what gets consented cleanly and built without drama.

The process starts with feasibility, and on a new build this stage earns its keep. We survey the plot, check its designations (conservation area, trees, flood risk, contaminated-land history, highways), assess the policy position, and give you an honest view of whether a new home here is a strong, marginal or unrealistic prospect, and at what scale. On a marginal or sensitive plot we often recommend Croydon's pre-application advice service, which gives a written steer from a planning officer on the principle and the design before you commit to a full application — frequently money well spent on a contested suburban plot.

The planning application itself is a full application, submitted through the Planning Portal with the drawings, the supporting documents and the fee. Croydon validates the submission, publicises it to neighbours and consultees, and a case officer assesses it against the development plan. The statutory determination period is eight weeks for a minor scheme such as a single house and thirteen weeks for a larger 'major' scheme, though in practice suburban applications often run a little longer, and the officer may negotiate amendments. A decision comes either under delegated powers or, for more contentious schemes, from the planning committee, and it usually carries conditions that must be discharged before or during construction.

Once permission is granted, several conditions typically have to be discharged before work starts — materials, landscaping, drainage details, tree protection, construction management — and these are submitted to the council for approval. In parallel we prepare and submit the building-regulations application (either a full plans application to Croydon's building control or to an approved inspector), so that the technical drawings, structural calculations and SAP are approved and the build can proceed lawfully. If you are claiming self-build CIL relief, this is also the point at which the commencement notice must be lodged before any work begins.

Construction then follows, inspected at key stages by the building-control body, and completed with the final certificates — the building-regulations completion certificate and the as-built SAP and Energy Performance Certificate — that make the home lettable, sellable and mortgageable. Because the same team designed the planning scheme, the structure, the services and the energy strategy, the transition from consent to site is smooth, and the home that is built is the home that was approved. We can stay involved through construction to answer the queries that inevitably arise and keep the build faithful to the design.

The cost of new build plans depends on the size and complexity of the home and the site, and we scope our work to your specific project and quote a clear, fixed fee for our part before any drawing work begins. Broadly, our fee covers the design stages — feasibility, the planning application, and the technical (building-regulations, structural and services) package — and can be taken in stages so you commit to feasibility and planning first and to the technical package once permission is in hand. That staged approach protects you: you are not paying for a full technical set until you know the home is consented.

Separate from our design fee, budget for the other costs of a new build. The council's planning application fee for a new dwelling is set nationally and is higher than for an extension. Any pre-application advice carries a fee. The technical assessments the site needs — ground investigation, arboricultural and ecological surveys and biodiversity net gain assessment, flood risk and drainage, transport or highways input, SAP energy assessment — each carry their own specialist cost, and which are needed depends on the plot. Then there is the building-control fee, the Community Infrastructure Levy on the new floorspace (unless self-build relief applies), and party wall surveyors' fees where the Act is engaged.

On timescales, a realistic programme for a single new home runs from a few weeks of feasibility and design, through an eight-to-thirteen-week (often somewhat longer) planning determination, into the technical design and building-regulations approval, and then the construction itself — which for a new house is typically the best part of a year on site depending on size, ground conditions and construction method. Pre-application advice, discharge of conditions, party wall procedures and the self-build CIL process all add steps, and we build a realistic overall programme for your specific scheme at the outset so the sequence and the timings are clear.

It is worth being clear about where money is really lost on new builds: on schemes designed to the maximum and then refused for overdevelopment; on plots bought without checking whether they can actually be accessed, drained or built on; on ground conditions or trees discovered too late; and on uncoordinated drawings that have to be re-engineered between planning and construction. Getting the feasibility, the design and the coordination right at the start is by far the most cost-effective way to build a new home in Croydon.

Understanding why new homes are refused is the best way to make sure yours is not. In Croydon's suburbs, by far the most common reason is overdevelopment and harm to character: a home that is too big, too bulky, too close to its boundaries, or that erodes the spacious pattern of plots, gaps and gardens that gives the street its identity. This is the charge the council became especially sensitive to after the controversy over its Suburban Design Guide, and it is the one a good design has to answer directly — by respecting the building line, the prevailing height and the rhythm of the street rather than maximising the footprint.

Harm to neighbours' amenity is the next great cause of refusal. A new home that overlooks a neighbour's garden or windows, blocks their daylight or sunlight, or looms over their boundary will be refused on amenity grounds even if it is attractive in its own right. Adequate separation distances, careful window design, and massing that steps away from boundaries are what avoid this. On garden and backland plots, refusals also come from inadequate access — a plot that cannot be reached safely by car, refuse and emergency vehicles — and from harm to trees, where a scheme requires felling important trees or building inside their root protection areas.

Substandard accommodation is a self-inflicted refusal reason that is entirely avoidable. Homes below the nationally described space standard, single-aspect units with poor light, homes without adequate private amenity space, or a scheme that leaves the retained original house with too little garden, all invite refusal. So do failures on the technical fronts that are increasingly material at planning stage: no or inadequate drainage and SuDS strategy, unaddressed flood risk, no biodiversity net gain, or a parking and highways position the council cannot accept.

Our approach is to anticipate every likely reason for refusal and answer it in the application itself: a design that demonstrably fits its street, protects neighbours' amenity, and provides good, compliant homes; access, trees, drainage and biodiversity resolved on the drawings; and the supporting statements that make the planning case policy by policy. We are honest with you at feasibility if a plot carries an insurmountable problem, because there is no value in submitting an application designed to be refused. The aim is a scheme the case officer can recommend for approval, not one that starts a fight.

Crown Architecture designs new homes across Croydon and the surrounding boroughs, and we do it as a single coordinated service: the planning design, the structural engineering and the building services all under one roof. On a new build — where everything is created from scratch and everything depends on everything else — that integration is the whole point. The layout, the structure, the foundations, the drainage, the energy strategy and the fire safety are completely interdependent; designed separately they clash and cost, designed together they produce a home that is consentable, buildable and efficient.

We know the Croydon context specifically: a borough that needs homes and supports suburban windfall development in principle, but that judges new-builds hard on character, scale and amenity, and that became acutely wary of overdevelopment after the rise and fall of its Suburban Design Guide. We use that knowledge to design homes that use their plots well and still fit their streets, and to give you honest advice at feasibility — whether the plot is a strong, marginal or unrealistic prospect, and at what scale — before you commit real money.

We also handle the technical reality of a whole new building, not just the planning drawings: foundations suited to Croydon's clay and its trees, a structure that stands up and coordinates with the architecture, services and an energy strategy that meet Part L today and anticipate the Future Homes Standard, drainage and SuDS that actually work on the plot, and the CIL, self-build relief and party wall matters that a new home involves. The same team that wins the permission prepares the building-regulations, structural and services package, so the home you get consent for is the home you build.

Just as importantly, we are straightforward to work with. We tell you early and honestly whether a plot will support a new home and at what scale, we quote a clear fixed fee, we work through the recognised RIBA stages so you always know where the project stands, and we prepare a coordinated, self-consistent set of new build plans that a case officer can approve and a builder can build without guesswork.

If you are thinking about building a new home in Croydon — a single house on a garden or corner plot, a replacement dwelling, an infill or backland scheme, or a small development of several homes — send us the address and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly what the plot can support and how to get there.