Replacement Dwelling Planning Drawings in Barnet

A replacement dwelling is exactly what the name suggests: you demolish an existing house and build a new house in its place. In everyday language it is a knock-down-rebuild, or a demolish-and-rebuild; in planning terms it is the erection of a new dwelling, which is development in its fullest sense. It is quite different from an extension, a loft conversion or an internal remodel, because you are not altering an existing building — you are removing it entirely and creating a wholly new one. That distinction matters enormously, because it determines the application route, the drawings required, and the way Barnet Council will judge the proposal.

People choose a replacement dwelling for good reasons. Sometimes the existing house is structurally tired, poorly insulated, or so awkwardly configured that adapting it would cost nearly as much as starting again for a far worse result. Sometimes the plot is generous — and Barnet has a great many wide, deep suburban plots — but the house on it makes poor use of the space. Sometimes an owner wants a modern, low-energy, accessible family home with the room sizes, ceiling heights, natural light and layout that a new build can deliver and an old house cannot. Whatever the motivation, the planning reality is the same: you are asking the council to approve a brand-new house, and the drawings are how you make that case.

This is why drawings sit at the very centre of a replacement dwelling, not at the edge of it. A written description — 'demolish the existing bungalow and build a new two-storey house' — tells the council almost nothing it needs to know. How tall is it? How wide? How does its footprint and roofline compare to the house it replaces and to the neighbours on either side? Where are the windows, and do they overlook anyone? How big are the rooms, and do they meet the space standards? How much garden remains? Every one of those questions is answered on a drawing, and every one of them can decide the application.

Getting the design and the drawings right at the outset is the first thing we do on any Barnet replacement dwelling. It determines whether the scheme is likely to be acceptable in principle, how large and how tall the new house can realistically be, and what has to be drawn to satisfy both the validation team and the case officer. Start there and the project runs smoothly; get it wrong and you can lose months — and thousands of pounds — to a refusal that a properly designed and drawn scheme would have avoided.

The most common misconception we correct at the start of a replacement dwelling project is the idea that some of it might be permitted development. It is not. Permitted development rights allow certain works to an existing dwellinghouse — extensions within limits, loft conversions, outbuildings and so on — but there is no permitted-development right to demolish a house and build a new one. The moment you propose to replace the dwelling, you are outside the householder and permitted-development regimes entirely, and you need a full planning application for the erection of a new dwelling.

That has practical consequences for the drawings and the documents. A full application for a new house is assessed against the whole of Barnet's adopted Local Plan and the London Plan, in the round, on its planning merits — not against the narrow, largely quantitative tests of a permitted-development right or a prior approval. The council will weigh the design, the scale and mass, the effect on the character of the street and any heritage assets, the living conditions of neighbours, the quality of the new home, its energy performance, drainage, trees and biodiversity, and more. Each of those considerations has to be answered by the drawings and the supporting statements.

The demolition itself is worth a word. In most cases the demolition of an ordinary, unlisted house that is not in a conservation area does not need separate planning permission — it is dealt with as part of, or alongside, the permission for the replacement. But demolition of a building in a conservation area, or of a listed building, is controlled and may need conservation-area consent or listed building consent, and demolition in general is subject to a prior-notification procedure under the Building Regulations for the method and safety of the works. We establish the demolition position at the outset because in Barnet's many conservation areas it can change the route.

The upshot is that a replacement dwelling is a serious, full planning proposition that has to be prepared to the highest standard. There is no shortcut, no lighter-touch route, and no room for a thin drawing set. The good news is that a full application, done properly, also gives you the freedom to design the house you actually want, rather than being boxed in by permitted-development limits — provided the design earns its consent. That is what a well-prepared set of drawings and a strong design case are for.

Barnet adopted its new Local Plan (covering the period 2021 to 2036) on 4 March 2025, replacing the older suite of development-plan documents. The adopted plan contains 51 policies and a large number of site allocations, and it is the framework against which a replacement dwelling is judged, alongside the London Plan and national policy. Knowing which policies apply lets us design the new house — and draw it — around them from the outset rather than hoping to satisfy them by accident. Several policy groups routinely come into play on a demolish-and-rebuild scheme.

The most directly relevant is Policy HOU02, which deals with replacement dwellings and the demolition of existing dwellinghouses, and with resisting the unjustified loss of family-sized homes. In practice this means Barnet expects a replacement dwelling to provide at least as good a housing offer as the home it replaces — and where the existing house is a family-sized home, the replacement is generally expected to remain a family-sized home rather than being subdivided into smaller units. The policy sits alongside HOU03, which protects family-sized housing more broadly, so a scheme that would reduce the supply of family homes has to justify itself carefully.

The character, design and heritage policies are decisive on almost every replacement dwelling. Policy CDH01 (Promoting High Quality Design) is the borough's central design policy: it requires development to respond to and enhance local character, to respect the scale, mass, height, roof form and pattern of surrounding buildings, spaces and streets, and to provide a good standard of amenity — acceptable daylight, sunlight, privacy and outlook — for both neighbours and future occupiers. Policy CDH02 (Sustainable and Inclusive Design) brings in accessibility and energy standards, and Policy CDH07 (Amenity Space and Landscaping) requires a proper standard of private outdoor amenity space, the retention of trees of value, and hard and soft landscaping designed as part of the scheme. Policy CDH08 protects Barnet's heritage.

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 ridge height that matches the neighbours rather than looming over them, a footprint that leaves a proper garden, windows that give light without overlooking, a room that meets the space standard, an accessible entrance and layout, a retained tree shown with its root protection area, a designed drainage strategy. We design to the policies and then draw so that compliance is plain — so the case officer can see, at a glance, that the new house meets Barnet's tests and can recommend approval without having to fill the gaps themselves.

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. High Barnet's historic high street remains the civic heart of the north of the borough, and its plots and houses reflect centuries of layered growth.

Further south, Barnet is a story of twentieth-century suburban expansion, and this is where most replacement dwellings happen. The arrival of 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 one of the borough's defining building types — often on wide plots with long gardens and space to the side. It is exactly this suburban stock, and these generous plots, that owners look to replace with larger, modern family homes. Hendon has its own deep history, from the RAF's aerodrome, now the Royal Air Force Museum, to its early aviation days, and Golders Green developed as a bustling, cosmopolitan centre around its Underground station and famous crossroads.

Barnet's crowning heritage asset is Hampstead Garden Suburb, designated a conservation area in 1968 and developed between 1907 and 1938 to a formal plan. It is one of the most famous planned communities in the world, celebrated for its Arts and Crafts architecture, its carefully composed streets, its hedges and greens, and its pioneering early-twentieth-century town-planning ideas — and it is protected accordingly. The borough has sixteen conservation areas in all — among them Mill Hill, with its Georgian and Victorian houses in generous plots; Monken Hadley, with its Georgian houses around a village green; and Totteridge, protected for its semi-rural character, its ponds and its historic manor houses — plus more than two thousand listed buildings.

For a replacement dwelling, this context is not just colour; it is planning-relevant, and it varies dramatically across the borough. A knock-down-rebuild on a wide inter-war plot in Finchley or Edgware faces the ordinary but exacting tests of character, scale and amenity. The same ambition in Hampstead Garden Suburb, Mill Hill, Monken Hadley or Totteridge faces far more searching heritage control — and in several of these areas Article 4 Directions have removed permitted-development rights to protect their character. Totteridge and Arkley also sit close to, or within, land where openness and low density are protected. Knowing exactly where your plot sits in Barnet's map, and what protects it, is the starting point for a credible design and a credible set of drawings.

Replacement dwellings have been part of Barnet's development story for as long as its suburbs have existed, but the pattern has shifted markedly over the decades. The borough's inter-war housing was built quickly and, by today's standards, modestly — smaller rooms, lower thermal performance, and layouts designed for a very different way of living. As those houses reached the end of their comfortable working lives, and as land values in outer London rose, replacing rather than merely extending them became an increasingly attractive proposition for owners with the means to do it.

For a long time the borough's response was relatively permissive on the leafier plots: generous gardens and wide frontages could absorb a larger house without obvious harm, and many a modest bungalow or dated detached house gave way to a substantial modern family home. Over time, though, Barnet — like much of outer London — grew more concerned about the cumulative effect of ever-larger replacements: houses that overwhelmed their plots, crowded their neighbours, ate into garden space, or sat awkwardly among the more restrained homes around them. That concern is precisely why the adopted Local Plan sets clearer expectations on character, scale, mass and amenity, and why a replacement dwelling now has to demonstrate that it belongs.

The other long-running strand is the tension between replacement and subdivision. Barnet's large family houses are a valued part of its housing stock, and the council has consistently sought to protect family-sized homes — through Policy HOU02 and HOU03 in the current plan, and through a borough-wide Article 4 Direction (in force since 2016) that brings small houses in multiple occupation under planning control. So a replacement dwelling that quietly reduces a family home to a set of smaller units, or that replaces one house with several, moves from being a straightforward rebuild into policy territory that has to be argued carefully.

The through-line is that Barnet has moved from a relatively relaxed stance towards a more managed one, in which quality and fit matter more than ever. The replacement dwellings that succeed today are the well-designed ones that respect their street, deliver a genuinely good home, meet the space, amenity, energy and drainage standards, and are drawn so the council can see all of that plainly. The ones that fail are the over-scaled, poorly-related schemes that test the council's patience rather than answering its concerns. Our job is to put your project firmly in the first category.

Before we draw a single line of a proposed house, we establish whether the principle of a replacement dwelling is acceptable on your particular plot — because in most of Barnet it is, but the terms on which it is acceptable vary enormously. The starting point is the existing lawful dwelling: if there is a lawful house on the plot now, replacing it with a single new house is generally acceptable in principle, subject to the design, scale, amenity and heritage tests. The debate is then about the character and quality of the replacement, not whether a house can be there at all.

Where the principle becomes more difficult is where the proposal does more than swap one house for another. Replacing one house with two or more dwellings is not a simple replacement; it is intensification, and it engages the housing-mix, family-homes and design policies far more heavily, and often the density and garden-land considerations too. Replacing a family-sized home with something smaller, or with flats, runs into HOU02 and HOU03. And replacing a house in a conservation area, or a locally listed or listed building, may struggle on the principle of demolition itself, because the loss of the existing building is a heritage harm that has to be justified.

Location within the borough matters too. On an ordinary suburban plot in Finchley, Hendon, Edgware or Colindale, a well-designed single replacement dwelling is usually acceptable in principle and the work is all in the design. In the most sensitive conservation areas — Hampstead Garden Suburb above all, but also Mill Hill, Monken Hadley and Totteridge — even the principle of demolishing and rebuilding can be contested, and the design bar is very high. On plots close to protected open land on the borough's northern and western edges, openness and low density can constrain what is acceptable.

We give you an honest view of the principle at feasibility, before you commit to a full design. That means checking the planning history of the plot, confirming the existing lawful use and dwelling, establishing the conservation-area and heritage position, and reading the relevant Local Plan policies against your ambition. If the principle is straightforward, we move quickly to design; if it is constrained, we tell you what is realistically achievable — and sometimes that a carefully considered pre-application enquiry is the right next step before any money is spent on a full drawing set.

For the great majority of Barnet replacement dwellings, the decisive planning question is not whether a new house can be built but how big, how tall, and how it relates to its neighbours and its street. Policy CDH01 requires development to respond to and respect the scale, mass, height, roof form and pattern of surrounding buildings, and this is where replacement dwellings most often come to grief. A new house that is markedly taller, wider, deeper or bulkier than the homes around it — that breaks the established building line, that overwhelms the gaps between houses, or that reads as alien among its neighbours — is vulnerable to refusal on character grounds even if everything inside it is excellent.

The building line is a recurring issue. Barnet's suburban streets typically have a consistent front building line, and the rhythm of the street depends on houses sitting at roughly the same set-back with recognisable gaps between them. A replacement dwelling that pushes forward of the line, or that closes the gaps to its neighbours, disrupts that rhythm. Ridge and eaves heights matter just as much: a new house whose ridge sits well above its neighbours' looms over the street and over adjoining gardens. So does depth — a house that extends much further back than its neighbours can harm the outlook and daylight of the gardens either side.

Massing is about how the bulk of the house is composed, not just its raw dimensions. A large house can sit comfortably in a street if its mass is well handled — broken down with subordinate elements, set-backs, a considered roof form, and detailing that relates to the local vernacular — and can look overbearing if it is a single undifferentiated block. In Barnet's more architecturally coherent streets and its conservation areas, the roof form, materials, window proportions and detailing are scrutinised closely, because a replacement dwelling that ignores the local character is exactly the kind of scheme the design policies are written to resist.

The drawings are how all of this is judged, and how it is won. We design the scale and mass of the new house to sit convincingly in its street from the first sketch, and we draw it in the context of its neighbours — showing the building line, the ridge and eaves heights relative to the houses either side, the gaps to the boundaries, and the roofscape — so the case officer can see that the new house belongs. Street-scene elevations and context sections that put the proposal alongside its neighbours are among the most persuasive drawings in a replacement dwelling application, and we prepare them as a matter of course.

Alongside the character of the street, the second great planning test for a replacement dwelling is its effect on the living conditions of the neighbours, and Policy CDH01 requires that development provides an acceptable standard of amenity for adjoining occupiers — acceptable daylight, sunlight, privacy and outlook. A new house that is taller, deeper or closer to the boundary than the one it replaces can harm the neighbours in ways the old house did not, and the council will refuse a scheme that causes unacceptable harm even where its own design is good.

Daylight and sunlight are the most technical of these considerations. A tall or deep replacement dwelling close to a boundary can overshadow a neighbour's garden or reduce the light to their windows, and on more contentious schemes a daylight and sunlight assessment (using the recognised BRE methodology) may be needed to demonstrate that the impact is acceptable. Outlook is related but distinct: a large blank flank wall or an overbearing bulk close to a neighbour's main windows or garden can create an oppressive sense of enclosure even where the numerical daylight loss is within guidelines.

Privacy and overlooking are just as important, and are entirely a matter of how the house is designed and drawn. Windows in flank walls facing a neighbour, first-floor windows or terraces that look directly into adjoining gardens or windows, and rooflights or dormers positioned without regard to overlooking are all common reasons for objection. The design answers — careful window positioning, obscure glazing to non-habitable rooms, appropriate separation distances, and screening — all have to be shown on the drawings, and the elevations and plans are where the case officer checks them.

We design a replacement dwelling to protect its neighbours from the outset, because it is far easier and cheaper to get the relationship right at the design stage than to defend a harmful scheme at determination. We check the separation distances, the overlooking angles, the daylight and sunlight impact, and the outlook from neighbouring windows and gardens, and we draw the scheme so the council can see that the new house respects the people around it. Where a scheme is finely balanced, we commission or prepare the supporting assessments the application needs to demonstrate that the impact is acceptable.

A replacement dwelling is a chance to build a genuinely excellent home, and Barnet expects it to meet a proper standard. The benchmark for the size of the new house and its rooms is the nationally described space standard (the NDSS), applied through the London Plan and the borough's own policies. The NDSS sets minimum gross internal floor areas by the number of bedrooms, the number of bedspaces and the number of storeys — for example a two-storey three-bedroom, five-person house (a 3b5p) has a minimum gross internal area of 96 square metres, a two-storey four-bedroom, five-person house (4b5p) a minimum of 100 square metres, and a two-storey four-bedroom, six-person house (4b6p) a minimum of 107 square metres, with the three-storey figures higher again to allow for the extra stairs.

Below the whole-house figures, the NDSS sets minimum room sizes: a single bedroom must be at least 7.5 square metres and a double at least 11.5 square metres, with a minimum width for a double or twin bedroom, and there are minimum built-in storage requirements and a minimum floor-to-ceiling height of 2.3 metres over most of the habitable rooms. For a replacement dwelling these are not onerous — a well-designed new house comfortably exceeds them — but the drawings have to demonstrate compliance, with room areas annotated so the council can check them without scaling off the plan.

Layout is where the quality of the new home is really made. A replacement dwelling should give every habitable room good natural light and outlook, a sensible relationship between the living spaces and the garden, adequate storage, and a plan that works for family life. Barnet's Policy CDH02 also brings in accessibility: new homes are expected to meet the Building Regulations optional accessibility standards, so a proportion of homes (and in practice the design of a single new house) should be accessible and adaptable to Part M4(2), with wheelchair-accessible standards (M4(3)) applying to a proportion of homes on larger schemes. The layout has to accommodate these requirements from the start.

We design the new home to exceed the space standards, lay out the rooms for light, outlook and a good relationship to the garden, and build in the accessibility and storage the policies require — then annotate the drawings so compliance is obvious. A replacement dwelling that quietly falls short on room sizes, storage or accessibility invites objection; one that clearly meets and exceeds the standards, and shows it on the drawings, reassures the case officer that the new house is a genuine improvement on the one it replaces.

One of the most Barnet-specific tests for a replacement dwelling is the treatment of the garden, the trees and the landscape, because a defining quality of the borough's suburbs is their green, spacious character. Policy CDH07 (Amenity Space and Landscaping) requires new homes to provide a proper standard of private outdoor amenity space, retains trees of value, and treats hard and soft landscaping as an integral part of the design rather than an afterthought — and the policy no longer allows amenity space to be provided off-site, so it has to be delivered within the plot.

For a replacement dwelling this means the new house cannot simply consume the whole plot. The proposal has to leave a garden of a genuinely usable size and shape, related sensibly to the living spaces, and the drawings have to show it. A common reason replacement schemes run into difficulty is that the ambition for a larger house squeezes the garden below an acceptable size, or leaves an awkward, overshadowed strip that does not function as amenity space. Getting the balance right between the footprint of the house and the garden that remains is one of the central design decisions, and we test it from the first sketch.

Trees are frequently decisive in Barnet. Many suburban plots contain mature trees, some protected by Tree Preservation Orders, and any tree within 15 metres of the proposed development — on the site or on adjoining land, including street trees — generally requires a tree survey and an arboricultural assessment to accompany the application. The drawings have to show the trees to be retained, their root protection areas, and how the new house, its foundations and its construction avoid harming them. A replacement dwelling that would require the loss of a protected or valued tree, or that would be undermined by a tree's roots, faces a serious hurdle that has to be designed around.

We design the garden, the landscaping and the tree strategy as part of the scheme, not bolted on at the end, and we draw them to Barnet's requirements: a landscaping plan showing the retained and new planting, the amenity space clearly identified and dimensioned, and — where trees are in play — a tree survey, an arboricultural impact assessment and a tree protection plan. A replacement dwelling that keeps the valued trees, delivers a proper garden, and shows a considered landscape response is far more likely to be seen as enhancing rather than eroding Barnet's green suburban character.

Barnet's heritage is a defining feature of the borough and a decisive factor in many replacement dwelling applications. With sixteen conservation areas and more than two thousand listed buildings, a significant proportion of the borough's plots sit somewhere the council applies heightened design and heritage control under Policy CDH08. If your plot is in a conservation area, adjoins one, or contains a listed or locally listed building, a replacement dwelling has to clear additional tests — and the drawings and supporting documents have to do far more.

In a conservation area, the character and appearance of the area are protected, and the demolition of an existing building that contributes to that character is itself a form of harm that has to be justified. Conservation-area consent (now dealt with as part of the planning application) is engaged for substantial demolition, and the replacement house has to preserve or enhance the character of the area — which in practice means the scale, roof form, materials, window proportions and detailing all have to respond convincingly to the local vernacular. A heritage statement assessing the significance of what is lost and the impact of what is proposed is normally required, and the drawings have to be detailed enough for the council to judge the quality of the design.

Where the building is listed, demolition or substantial alteration needs listed building consent as well as planning permission, and the bar is very high — the wholesale replacement of a listed building is rarely acceptable. Even a locally listed building or a building that makes a positive contribution to a conservation area is difficult to replace, and the design of any replacement is critical. In Hampstead Garden Suburb, one of the most tightly controlled areas in the country, both the principle and the detail of any change are scrutinised intensely.

Several of Barnet's most sensitive areas — Hampstead Garden Suburb, Mill Hill, Monken Hadley and Totteridge among them — are also covered by Article 4 Directions that remove certain permitted-development rights to protect their character. While a replacement dwelling always needs full permission regardless of Article 4, the presence of a Direction signals just how carefully the council guards these areas, and it affects what can be done to the new house afterwards. We establish the heritage position at the very outset of any Barnet replacement dwelling — whether the building is listed or locally listed, whether it is in or near a conservation area, and whether an Article 4 Direction applies — because it shapes both the principle and the design.

Every credible set of replacement dwelling planning drawings begins with an accurate measured survey of the existing house and, crucially, a topographical survey of the plot. This is not the same as working from an old estate agent's floorplan or the deeds — those are frequently inaccurate, out of date, or missing the levels, boundaries and features that decide a replacement dwelling. Because you are designing a brand-new house on the plot, the survey of the land matters as much as the survey of the building it replaces.

A good survey records the existing house — its footprint, heights, roof form and elevations, so the council can see exactly what is being demolished — and a topographical survey records the plot: its precise boundaries, the levels across the site (which decide the height of the new house relative to the street and the neighbours), the position of trees, drains, services and any other features, and the relationship of the plot to the adjoining houses and gardens. On a sloping site, the levels are decisive, because a new house that looks modest on a flat drawing can loom over a lower neighbour once the ground levels are taken into account.

The survey also captures the context, and for a replacement dwelling the context is the case. We record the neighbouring houses on either side — their building line, their ridge and eaves heights, their footprints and their windows — because the whole judgement of scale, mass and amenity is made by comparing the proposal with them. A survey that ignores the neighbours produces drawings that cannot demonstrate the new house sits comfortably in its street, which is the single most important thing a replacement dwelling application has to show.

Getting the survey right protects you throughout the project. An accurate existing and topographical survey lets us test the proposed house against the true plot from the first sketch, so that when we say the ridge sits below the neighbours', or the new house leaves a garden of a given size, or a tree is retained outside its root protection area, it is true of the plot that exists — not of a hopeful approximation. It is also the foundation for the structural design, the drainage strategy and the building-regulations package that follow. We treat the survey as the bedrock of the whole application.

The 'existing' half of a replacement dwelling drawing set records the house and plot as they are now, and Barnet requires it even though the existing house is going to be demolished. It gives the council its baseline: the case officer compares the existing situation with the proposal to understand exactly what is changing — how the footprint, height, mass and garden of the new house compare with those of the house it replaces — and that comparison is central to the assessment of scale, character and amenity.

A complete existing set normally includes an existing site plan showing the plot, the footprint of the existing house, the boundaries, the trees and the garden; existing floor plans of the house to be demolished; existing elevations of every face of the house, so the council can see its current appearance and height; an existing roof plan; and existing sections showing the levels and heights. Because the levels are so important on a replacement dwelling, the existing set should show the ground levels across the plot and the relationship to the neighbouring houses and gardens.

For a replacement dwelling specifically, the existing drawings do particular work. They establish the scale and mass of what is there now, which is the reference point against which the proposal is judged — a replacement of similar or modestly greater scale is far easier to justify than one that dwarfs the original. They show the position of the existing house on the plot, the building line, and the existing garden, all of which frame the debate about the new house. And where trees are present, the existing drawings record them so the arboricultural case can be made.

We draw the existing set from our own measured and topographical surveys, to Barnet's required scales, fully annotated and fully dimensioned, including the levels and the context of the neighbouring houses. Nothing is guessed, and nothing is quietly flattered. A precise, honest record of what is there is the foundation on which a persuasive proposed scheme is built — and it is also what the validation team checks first.

The 'proposed' drawings are where the new house is designed and made visible, and they are the drawings the case officer scrutinises most closely. They have to show, unambiguously, what will be built: the new footprint and its position on the plot, the new floor plans and their layout, the new elevations and roof, the height and mass relative to the neighbours, the garden that remains, and all the supporting arrangements the new house requires. This is where design skill and knowledge of Barnet's policies earn their keep, because a proposed drawing that quietly overreaches on scale, or falls short on amenity or space, is the quickest route to a refusal.

A complete proposed set includes a proposed site plan showing the new house, its footprint, the boundaries, the garden, parking, access, trees and drainage; proposed floor plans for every level, with rooms labelled and areas annotated against the space standards; proposed elevations of every face of the house, drawn to show the materials, window proportions and detailing; a proposed roof plan; and proposed sections showing the internal levels, the storey heights and the relationship to the ground and the neighbours. Because scale and context are decisive, we also prepare street-scene elevations that place the new house alongside its neighbours, and context sections showing the ridge and eaves heights relative to the adjoining houses.

The elevations and the street scene carry special weight on a replacement dwelling. They are where the council judges whether the new house respects the character of the street — its scale, its roof form, its materials and its detailing — and a poorly resolved or over-scaled elevation can sink an application whose internal layout is excellent. We design the external appearance as carefully as the plan, choosing materials and proportions that relate to the local context, and draw the elevations and street scene so the quality and fit of the design are plain.

Everything on the proposed drawings is designed to Barnet's Local Plan policies and drawn to make compliance obvious. Room areas meet the space standard and say so; windows demonstrate light and are positioned to avoid overlooking; the ridge sits comfortably below or in line with the neighbours; the garden is dimensioned and clearly usable; retained trees are shown with their protection areas; parking, bins and cycle storage have designed homes. A proposed drawing set that anticipates and answers the council's tests, rather than leaving them to be raised as objections, is materially more likely to be approved.

Two drawings that seem minor but are absolutely required — and are a surprisingly common reason for invalidation — are the location plan and the site (or block) plan. Barnet, like every English authority, requires a location plan based on an up-to-date Ordnance Survey map, normally at a scale of 1:1250 (or 1:2500 for larger sites), showing the application site and enough of the surroundings — at least two named roads — to let anyone find and identify the plot. The application site must be edged in red, and any other adjoining land in the same ownership edged in blue.

The site or block plan is drawn at a larger scale, typically 1:500 or 1:200, and shows the plot and the new house in detail: the footprint, the boundaries, the building line, the garden, hard and soft surfaces, parking and access, the position of any bin and cycle stores, trees and drainage. On a replacement dwelling the site plan is where the council checks how the new house sits in its plot — its set-back from the street, its gaps to the boundaries, and the garden that remains — so it is one of the most important drawings in the set, not a formality.

These plans have to meet specific presentation standards, and Barnet's validation team checks them rigorously. The plans must be to a stated, recognised metric scale with a scale bar and a north point; they must not carry a 'do not scale' note (the council needs to be able to scale off them), and should show scaled dimensions including those to boundaries; and for electronic submission through the Planning Portal each drawing should be a properly named PDF within the council's file-size limits. These are exactly the details that get an application bounced back before it is even registered.

We prepare the location and site plans to Barnet's requirements as a matter of course, using the correct OS base, the correct scales, the red and blue lines in the right places, and full annotation including the levels and the boundaries. It is unglamorous work, but getting it wrong costs weeks — an invalidated application has to be corrected and resubmitted, and the clock does not start until it validates. We would rather get it right first time.

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 replacement dwelling the list is more demanding than for a householder extension, because a new dwelling is a full application. If the required drawings or documents are missing, drawn to the wrong scale, or fail the presentation rules, the application is invalid and goes nowhere until it is fixed.

For a replacement dwelling, Barnet's requirements typically include: a location plan (1:1250 or 1:2500) and a site/block plan; existing and proposed floor plans for all levels; existing and proposed elevations of all faces; existing and proposed roof plans; existing and proposed sections showing levels and heights; and, importantly, a Design and Access Statement, which is required for the creation of a new dwelling and which explains the design rationale, the response to context, and how the scheme is accessed. Depending on the site the application may also need a heritage statement, a tree survey and arboricultural report, a daylight and sunlight assessment, a drainage or SuDS strategy, a sustainability or energy statement, and the completed forms and the correct fee.

The presentation rules are specific and strictly applied: drawings to a recognised metric scale (1:50 or 1:100 is usual for plans and elevations), with a scale bar and north point, properly titled and numbered, without a 'do not scale' caveat, and — for electronic submission — as named PDFs within the file-size limits. A new-dwelling application also has to be internally consistent: the areas quoted in the Design and Access Statement must match the drawings, the heights shown on the sections must match the elevations, and the site plan must match the survey.

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 prepare full new-dwelling applications for Barnet regularly, we know the practical points the validation team looks for — the Design and Access Statement, the levels on the sections, the tree information — and we would far rather spend a little extra care up front than lose the client weeks to an avoidable rejection.

A replacement dwelling is a complete new building, so it needs a complete structural design — from the ground up, quite literally. This is one of the great advantages of Crown's integrated approach: because we provide the architecture and the structural engineering together, the house we draw for planning is a house that can actually be built, with the structure resolved rather than assumed. On a new dwelling the structural design is not a detail to be sorted out later; it shapes the foundations, the frame, the spans and, sometimes, the very feasibility of the design.

Foundations come first, and on a Barnet plot the ground conditions are decisive. Much of the borough sits on London Clay, a shrinkable soil that moves with moisture and is strongly affected by nearby trees — and Barnet's leafy plots are full of trees. Foundations near mature trees, or on clay, frequently need to be deeper than standard, or engineered as piles or reinforced rafts, to avoid movement; a site investigation and a ground assessment inform the design. Where the existing house is being demolished, the new foundations also have to account for the old ones and for any made ground left behind.

Above the foundations, the superstructure has to be designed as a coherent whole: the loadbearing strategy (masonry, timber frame, steel frame or a hybrid), the floor and roof structure, the spans over large openings and open-plan spaces, and the lateral stability of the building. Modern replacement dwellings often want large glazed openings, open-plan living spaces, and cantilevers or long spans that a traditional loadbearing masonry house did not — all of which need proper structural design, sized members and calculations. Where the plot is tight or the design includes a basement, the structural and geotechnical design becomes more involved still.

By designing the structure alongside the architecture, we avoid the classic new-build problem: a planning drawing that looks elegant but cannot be built as drawn once the beams, foundations and stability are worked out. It also means that when you go to site, your builder, your engineer and the building-control body are working from one coordinated set of information. The planning drawings and the construction drawings speak to each other because the same team prepares both — which is faster, cheaper and far less prone to costly surprises.

A new house has to be serviced, and a modern low-energy home has more demanding services than the house it replaces. Crown designs the building services — the mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) — alongside the architecture and the structure, so the drawings account for how the house is heated, ventilated, powered, supplied with water and drained, rather than leaving those to be squeezed in later. On a replacement dwelling this coordination matters because the services, the structure and the architecture all compete for the same space and have to be resolved together.

Heating and hot water are the biggest change. Under the direction of national policy — the 2021 Part L uplift and the Future Homes Standard — new homes are moving decisively away from gas boilers towards low-carbon heating, principally air-source heat pumps, together with high levels of insulation and airtightness. A heat pump needs an external unit, space for a hot-water cylinder, and a heat-emitter strategy (larger radiators or underfloor heating) that works at lower flow temperatures; all of this has to be planned into the design from the start rather than retrofitted onto a design conceived for a boiler.

Ventilation follows from the airtightness. A well-sealed, low-energy new house needs a designed ventilation strategy — often mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) — to keep the air fresh and avoid condensation, and MVHR needs plant space and duct routes that have to be coordinated with the structure and the ceilings. Electrical design has to allow for a modern household load, electric vehicle charging, and increasingly solar photovoltaic panels and battery storage. Water supply and, importantly, foul and surface-water drainage have to be designed for the new house and connected appropriately.

Designing the services with the architecture and structure means the house works as a whole: the plant has somewhere to go, the ducts and pipes have routes, the ceilings and floors accommodate them, and the energy strategy that the planning and building-regulations submissions rely on is deliverable. It is another facet of the integrated approach that makes a Crown replacement dwelling buildable rather than merely drawable.

A replacement dwelling is a brand-new home, and new homes have to meet the energy and carbon requirements of the Building Regulations — which have tightened sharply and are tightening further. The current Part L (the 2021 edition, in force since June 2022) requires new homes to produce around 31 per cent less carbon dioxide than under the previous standard, achieved through better fabric, better services and, in practice, a move away from gas. Compliance is demonstrated through an energy calculation — the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) — carried out for each new dwelling, first at design stage (a predicted SAP) and again on completion (an as-built SAP), producing the Energy Performance Certificate.

The direction of travel is the Future Homes Standard, which is being introduced for new homes and is expected to require them to produce in the order of 75 to 80 per cent less carbon than homes built to the 2013 standard — effectively zero-carbon-ready homes, heated by heat pumps rather than gas, with very high fabric performance and low-carbon technologies. The assessment methodology is also evolving, with the Standard Assessment Procedure being succeeded by a more detailed Home Energy Model. For a replacement dwelling being designed and built now, the sensible course is to design to a standard that anticipates the Future Homes Standard rather than the bare minimum, both to future-proof the home and because a low-energy house is cheaper to run and more comfortable to live in.

Barnet's own policies reinforce this. Policy CDH02 (Sustainable and Inclusive Design) and the borough's climate and energy policies expect new development to minimise carbon emissions, follow the energy hierarchy (be lean, be clean, be green — reduce demand, supply efficiently, then use renewables), and incorporate measures such as high insulation, efficient services, solar photovoltaics and, increasingly, provision for water efficiency and overheating mitigation. A replacement dwelling that treats energy as an afterthought will struggle against these policies; one that is designed as a genuinely low-energy home meets them comfortably.

We design the energy strategy into the house from the outset — the fabric, the heat-pump heating, the ventilation, the renewables — and prepare or coordinate the SAP calculations and energy statement the planning and building-regulations submissions require. Because the same team designs the architecture, the structure and the services, the energy strategy is realistic and buildable rather than a paper exercise, and the house that gets consent is the house that will actually perform.

A new house changes how water behaves on the plot, and Barnet takes surface-water drainage seriously — the borough has a history of surface-water flooding, and the council, as the Lead Local Flood Authority, is a statutory consultee on the drainage of major developments (ten or more dwellings) and expects sustainable drainage on smaller schemes too. A replacement dwelling, especially one with a larger footprint and more hard surfacing than the house it replaces, has to demonstrate that it will not increase flood risk on the site or elsewhere.

The starting point is the London Plan drainage hierarchy, which requires surface water to be managed as high up the hierarchy as possible — ideally stored and reused, or infiltrated into the ground on site, then attenuated and released slowly, with discharge to the public sewer as the last resort. The aim is to achieve, as far as possible, greenfield run-off rates, so the new house does not shed more water, faster, than the plot did before. On Barnet's clay soils, infiltration is not always feasible, so attenuation — through storage crates, permeable paving, water butts, green roofs or rain gardens — is often the answer, and the drawings and a drainage strategy have to show how it works.

Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) are the means to all this, and Barnet actively encourages them. A SuDS strategy for a replacement dwelling might combine permeable driveways and paths, a soakaway or attenuation tank where the ground allows, rainwater harvesting, and soft landscaping that slows and absorbs run-off. Where the plot is in a flood-risk area, or where the increase in impermeable surfacing is significant, the council will require evidence of the drainage approach — and Barnet publishes a SuDS proforma that has to be completed for many applications.

We design the drainage and SuDS strategy as part of the scheme and draw it clearly, so the council can see that the new house manages its water responsibly. Because we resolve the levels, the foundations and the drainage together, the strategy is realistic on the actual plot — not a generic template — and it supports rather than undermines the rest of the application. Good drainage design is also a genuine benefit to the finished home, reducing the risk of flooding and waterlogging on the plot for years to come.

A replacement dwelling starts with demolition, and the demolition itself has to be handled properly. For an ordinary unlisted house outside a conservation area, the demolition does not usually need separate planning permission and is dealt with alongside the permission for the new house, but it is subject to a prior-notification procedure under the Building Regulations covering the method, the making-safe of adjoining buildings, and the removal of debris. In a conservation area, or for a listed building, demolition is controlled and may need consent in its own right — one of the reasons we establish the heritage position at the outset.

Party walls are a frequent issue on a replacement dwelling, particularly where the existing house is a semi-detached or terraced property sharing a wall with a neighbour, or where the new house is built close to a boundary. The Party Wall etc. Act 1996 governs work to a shared wall, work close to a neighbour's structure, and excavation near a neighbour's foundations — all of which a demolish-and-rebuild routinely involves. The Act is separate from planning: it does not affect whether you get permission, but it has to be complied with before the work starts, through notices and, if necessary, a party wall award. We flag the party wall position early so it can be dealt with in good time rather than holding up the build.

Construction impact is a real consideration for a whole new house, and one the council and the neighbours care about. Demolishing a house and building a new one is a substantial operation — noise, dust, deliveries, and the management of the site — and on more sensitive schemes the council may require a construction management plan setting out how the impact on neighbours and the highway will be controlled. Where the plot is tight, or on a narrow suburban street, the logistics of demolition and construction have to be thought through, and the drawings and any construction management plan have to address them.

We plan the demolition, the party wall procedure and the construction logistics as part of a properly run replacement dwelling project, so that the transition from consent to a completed house is smooth. It is another reason the integrated approach helps: because we understand how the house will be built, we can anticipate the demolition, party wall and construction issues at the design stage rather than discovering them on site.

A replacement dwelling almost always creates new floorspace, and new floorspace attracts the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) — a charge, calculated per square metre, that developers pay to fund infrastructure. In Barnet there are two CILs on a new home: the borough's own CIL and the Mayor of London's CIL. Barnet's CIL charging schedule, approved in March 2022 and effective for permissions granted from 1 April 2022, charges residential development at £300 per square metre; the Mayoral CIL, which funds transport infrastructure, charges Barnet (in its charging band) at £35 per square metre. Both are index-linked, so the figures rise over time.

The crucial point for a replacement dwelling is that CIL is charged on the net additional floorspace — the gross internal area of the new house minus the gross internal area of the building being demolished — provided the building being demolished qualifies. To offset the existing floorspace, the building generally has to have been in lawful use for a continuous period of at least six months within the three years before permission takes effect (the 'vacancy test'). So a like-for-like replacement of a lawfully occupied house may attract little or no CIL, because the existing floorspace is deducted; a much larger new house pays CIL on the increase; and a replacement of a long-vacant or unlawful building may find the existing floorspace cannot be offset at all.

Timing and procedure matter enormously with CIL, and getting them wrong is expensive. If you demolish the existing house before planning permission is granted, you can lose the right to offset its floorspace, so the whole new house becomes chargeable. The correct CIL forms have to be submitted with the application and at the right stages, and reliefs — such as the self-build exemption, which can remove the CIL liability entirely for someone building their own home to live in — have to be claimed correctly and before commencement, or they are lost. We handle the CIL forms and flag the reliefs so you do not fall into these traps.

For a single replacement dwelling, formal planning obligations under a section 106 agreement are less common than on larger schemes, but conditions and, occasionally, contributions can still apply. We calculate the likely CIL early so you can budget for it, advise on the self-build exemption where it is available, and manage the forms and the reliefs so that a family building their own home is not landed with an avoidable bill of tens of thousands of pounds. It is one of the areas where knowing the Barnet regime saves real money.

Bringing it together, a Crown replacement dwelling 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 two stories with total clarity: what is on the plot now, and what will replace it — and it does so consistently, so that every part of the application reinforces every other part. It is a full new-build package, not a stripped-down set, because a new dwelling deserves and requires nothing less.

The planning drawing package normally includes: an accurate measured survey of the existing house and a topographical survey of the plot; a location plan (1:1250 or 1:2500) with the site edged in red and any other land in the same ownership in blue; a site or block plan at 1:500 or 1:200 showing the existing and proposed footprints, boundaries, garden, parking, access, trees and drainage; existing plans, elevations, roof plan and sections; and proposed plans, elevations, roof plan and sections showing the new house in full — room areas annotated against the space standards, windows positioned for light and privacy, and levels and heights shown. We add the drawings that win replacement dwellings: street-scene elevations placing the new house among its neighbours, and context sections showing the ridge and eaves heights relative to the adjoining houses.

Alongside the drawings we prepare the supporting documents a new dwelling needs: a Design and Access Statement setting out the design rationale, the response to the character of the street, and the access strategy; and, depending on the site, a heritage statement, a tree survey and arboricultural report, a daylight and sunlight assessment, a drainage and SuDS strategy, and a sustainability or energy statement. Where structural and services work is involved — which for a new house is always — the structural design and the building-services design are developed alongside, so the scheme can move smoothly to building regulations and construction.

Everything is prepared to be internally consistent — the room sizes on the plans match the areas quoted in the Design and Access Statement, the heights on the sections match the elevations, the site plan matches the survey, the drainage on the site plan matches the SuDS strategy. A coordinated, self-consistent application is materially more likely to validate and to be approved than a set of drawings and statements that contradict each other. That consistency is what a professional package buys you, and it is what a case officer needs in order to recommend a new house for approval.

The process starts with feasibility. We survey the house and the plot, confirm the existing lawful dwelling and the planning history, establish whether the plot is in a conservation area or affected by an Article 4 Direction or protected trees, and assess whether the principle of a replacement dwelling is acceptable and on what terms. We then test the plot against Barnet's character, scale, amenity, space and amenity-space policies to establish how large and how tall a new house it can realistically support. This is where we give you an honest view of what is achievable, before you spend money on a full design and a full set of drawings.

Barnet offers pre-application advice, and on a replacement dwelling it is very often worth using. A knock-down-rebuild is a significant proposal that turns on the fine judgement of scale, mass and character, and a written steer from the council on a preliminary design reduces the risk of a refusal, flags concerns early, and shows the eventual case officer that the scheme has been developed thoughtfully. On heritage-sensitive plots, in conservation areas, or where the scale is ambitious, a pre-application response can be genuinely decisive, and we prepare and manage the pre-application submission where it adds value.

We then develop the full design, prepare the 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 to any neighbour objections, providing additional information such as daylight or tree assessments, and negotiating amendments where that will secure approval. A single new dwelling generally runs against an eight-week statutory target from validation, though a contested or heritage-sensitive scheme can take longer and may, in some cases, go to a planning committee rather than being decided by officers.

Once permission is granted, we can take the scheme forward into the building-regulations and construction drawings, discharge any pre-commencement conditions (details of materials, landscaping, drainage, tree protection and the like), and coordinate the demolition, party wall and construction stages, so the same team that won the consent also delivers the house. Because we design with the construction reality in mind throughout, the transition from a granted planning drawing to a built home is smooth rather than a fresh start.

The cost of replacement dwelling planning drawings in Barnet depends on the size and complexity of the house and how much of the full package you need — from a modest single-storey replacement on a straightforward plot, through to a large, architecturally ambitious family home on a sensitive or sloping site with significant structural, energy and drainage design. We scope the work to your specific project and give you a clear fee for our part before any design work begins, so you know what you are committing to, and we set out the stages so you can see what you are paying for at each point.

Separate from our fee, you should budget for the council's application fee, which is set nationally and payable to Barnet on submission (the fee for a new dwelling is higher than a householder fee), and for any pre-application advice fee. There will be survey costs (measured and topographical), and — because a new house needs them — structural design, a SAP energy assessment, and often a tree survey, a daylight and sunlight assessment, or a drainage strategy. And there is the Community Infrastructure Levy: Barnet's £300 per square metre plus the Mayoral £35 per square metre on the net additional floorspace, unless the self-build exemption or the offset for the demolished house reduces it. We set all of this out at the start so there are no surprises.

On timescales, the surveys and the design typically take several weeks, pre-application advice (if used) adds a few weeks, and the application itself runs against an eight-week target from validation for a single new dwelling, with more complex or committee-bound cases taking longer. Getting the drawings and documents 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, and a refusal can cost many months if it has to go to appeal or resubmission.

It is worth remembering that good design and drawings are not where money is lost on a replacement dwelling — money is lost on refusals, on houses that turn out to be un-buildable as drawn, and on CIL bills that a properly claimed exemption would have avoided. Getting the scheme designed and drawn right first time, to a standard that validates and answers the council's tests, is the most cost-effective way to bring a Barnet knock-down-rebuild through planning and on to site.

To make the process concrete, consider a common Barnet scenario: a dated, poorly-insulated detached house of the 1950s on a wide, deep plot in a residential street in Finchley, that the owners want to demolish and replace with a larger, modern, low-energy family home. It is exactly the kind of replacement dwelling the borough sees regularly — a good plot, an unremarkable existing house, and an ambition for something much better — and exactly the kind of scheme that succeeds or fails on the quality of its design and drawings.

At feasibility we survey the house and carry out a topographical survey of the plot, confirm the existing lawful dwelling and check the planning history, and establish that the plot is not in a conservation area but does contain a mature oak near the rear boundary that will need protecting. We read the street: the building line, the ridge and eaves heights of the neighbours, the gaps between houses, and the prevailing character. That tells us the envelope within which a replacement can sit comfortably — roughly the neighbours' ridge height, in line with their building line, with proper gaps to the boundaries and a generous garden retained.

We then design a new house that works within that envelope: two storeys with accommodation in the roof, a footprint that leaves a good garden, a ridge that sits in line with the neighbours rather than above them, and an external appearance — materials, roof form, window proportions — that relates to the street while being unmistakably contemporary. Inside, the house comfortably exceeds the nationally described space standards, gives every habitable room good light and outlook, provides proper storage, and is designed to be accessible to Part M4(2). The oak is retained, shown with its root protection area, and the foundations near it are designed to avoid harm.

The technical design runs alongside the architecture. The structure is designed for the London Clay ground and the tree, with deeper or piled foundations near the oak; the house is designed as a low-energy home with a heat pump, high insulation, MVHR and solar panels, with a SAP assessment demonstrating compliance and anticipating the Future Homes Standard; and a SuDS strategy with permeable paving and attenuation manages the surface water to greenfield rates. All of this is designed as one coordinated package, so the planning drawings are genuinely buildable.

On the planning side we prepare the full set — location plan, site plan, existing and proposed plans, elevations, roof plans and sections, plus the street-scene elevations and context sections that show the new house sitting comfortably among its neighbours — with room areas annotated and the levels shown. Alongside them we prepare the Design and Access Statement, the tree survey and arboricultural report, the drainage strategy and the energy statement, and we calculate the CIL and claim the self-build exemption for the owners. Submitted through the Planning Portal, drawn to validate first time and argued against Barnet's character, space, amenity, tree, energy and drainage policies, a scheme like this goes in as a proposal the case officer can recommend for approval — which is the difference between a replacement dwelling designed to succeed and one that is simply hoped through.

Not every new-house ambition in Barnet is a straight one-for-one replacement, and the variations are much harder. A common one is the desire to get more than one dwelling out of a generous plot — replacing a single house with a pair of houses, or keeping the existing house and building a second one in a large back garden (backland development). These proposals are not simple replacements; they are intensification, and Barnet judges them far more searchingly, so it is worth being clear-eyed about them from the start.

Garden and backland development is a sensitive subject in Barnet, precisely because the borough's green, spacious suburban character depends on its gardens. National policy no longer classes gardens as 'previously developed land', which removed the presumption in favour of building on them, and Barnet's character and amenity policies resist development that would harm the established pattern of gardens, plots and spaces. A new house shoehorned into a back garden, reached by a narrow access, overlooking its neighbours and eroding the green heart of a block, is exactly the kind of scheme the policies are written to resist — and many are refused.

That does not mean it is always impossible. The plots that work for backland or garden development tend to be genuine anomalies in the urban grain — an unusually large garden, a corner plot, a plot with a suitable independent access — where a well-designed additional house can be accommodated without harming the character of the area, overlooking the neighbours, or losing valued trees. But the design bar is high, the amenity and access tests are exacting, and the housing-mix and family-homes policies (HOU02 and HOU03) apply where the split reduces the supply of family houses. These schemes need very careful design and a strong planning case.

We are honest at feasibility about whether a backland or 'one becomes two' scheme is realistic on your plot, because there is no value in pursuing an intensification that the character, amenity and access policies will defeat. Where a plot genuinely can take an additional well-designed house, we design and draw it to answer every one of the council's concerns — access, overlooking, garden space, trees, character and mix — and make the case explicitly. Where it cannot, we say so, and often a single, excellent replacement dwelling is the better and more achievable outcome.

Understanding why applications fail is the best way to make sure yours does not — and for replacement dwellings in Barnet the failures split into two kinds. The first, and most avoidable, is invalidation: the application never even reaches the merits because a required drawing or document is missing, drawn to the wrong scale, or fails the presentation rules. A missing Design and Access Statement, a location plan without named roads, sections that omit the levels, a missing tree survey, or plans marked 'do not scale' will all get an application bounced back. These are pure preparation failures, and a properly assembled set eliminates them.

The second kind is refusal on the merits, and for replacement dwellings the dominant theme is scale, mass and character. A new house that is too tall, too wide, too deep or too bulky for its street — that breaks the building line, looms over its neighbours, closes the gaps between houses, or reads as alien among them — is the classic reason a Barnet replacement dwelling is refused under Policy CDH01. Over-development of the plot, leaving too little garden or too much hard surfacing, is close behind, engaging the amenity-space policy CDH07.

Harm to neighbours is the next big theme: loss of daylight or sunlight, an overbearing bulk close to a boundary, and overlooking from new windows or terraces. Heritage harm follows, where a replacement in or near a conservation area, or affecting a listed or locally listed building, fails to preserve or enhance the character of the area under CDH08. Loss of protected or valued trees, an inadequate drainage or SuDS response, poor energy performance, and — where the scheme reduces the supply of family homes — conflict with HOU02 and HOU03, all feature. And, occasionally, a scheme is refused because the homes themselves fall short of the space standards.

Our approach is to anticipate every one of these reasons and answer it in the application itself — validating first time by getting the drawing set and the Design and Access Statement right, designing the scale and mass to sit comfortably in the street, protecting the neighbours' daylight and privacy, keeping the valued trees, delivering a proper garden, meeting the space and energy standards, and managing the drainage. We are honest with you at feasibility if a plot cannot take the house you have in mind, or sits somewhere the change will be resisted, because there is no value in submitting an application designed to fail.

A grant of planning permission for a replacement dwelling rarely comes without conditions, and on a new house there are usually a good number of them. It is worth knowing what to expect so they can be discharged smoothly rather than becoming a stumbling block later. Conditions are requirements attached to the consent that must be met — some before work starts, some before the house is occupied, and some on an ongoing basis — and failing to comply with them can put the development at risk.

On Barnet replacement dwelling permissions, common conditions include a requirement to build in accordance with the approved drawings (which is why an accurate, complete set matters even after approval); the approval of samples or details of the external materials before that part of the work is built; the approval of a hard and soft landscaping scheme and its subsequent implementation; tree protection measures during construction; the approval and implementation of the drainage and SuDS strategy; obscure glazing to particular windows to prevent overlooking; and, on more sensitive or larger schemes, a construction management plan. There will usually be conditions securing the energy and, sometimes, the accessibility measures the application relied on.

Some conditions are 'pre-commencement' — they have to be discharged before any work (or before demolition) begins — and getting them discharged promptly is essential to keeping the programme on track. Others are 'pre-occupation', requiring, for instance, that the parking, the cycle store, the drainage or the landscaping is provided before the house is occupied. Each condition is discharged by a short further application to the council providing the required information, and we flag the onerous ones when the decision arrives and prepare the discharge submissions so the build is not held up.

The practical message is that the consent is the beginning of a compliant new house, not the whole of it: the conditions, the building-regulations sign-off, the CIL procedure and the party wall arrangements all have to line up. Because we design and draw the scheme with the likely conditions in mind, the conditions Barnet attaches are generally ones the scheme already meets — which makes discharging them straightforward rather than a fresh round of design.

Crown Architecture prepares replacement dwelling planning drawings across Barnet and the surrounding boroughs, and we do it as a single coordinated service: the measured and topographical survey, the architectural design and planning drawings, the structural design and the building services under one roof. That matters on a replacement dwelling more than almost any other project type, because a new house is a full building in which the architecture, the structure, the energy strategy, the services and the drainage are completely interdependent — designed separately they clash; designed together the planning drawing you submit is genuinely buildable.

We know the Barnet regime: the adopted Local Plan and the character, design, heritage, housing and climate policies your application will be judged against — HOU02, HOU03, CDH01, CDH02, CDH07 and CDH08 among them; the council's validation checklist and drawing standards for a new dwelling, so the set validates first time; the borough's sixteen conservation areas, its listed buildings and its Article 4 Directions that add heritage tests in the most sensitive locations; and the CIL regime, including the self-build exemption that can save a family building their own home a substantial sum. 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 whether your plot will take the house you have in mind and on what terms, we quote a clear fee, and we prepare a coordinated, self-consistent drawing package that a validation team registers first time and a case officer can approve without having to fill in the gaps. Then, once consent is granted, we can carry the scheme through building regulations and into the construction information your builder needs, and manage the CIL, the conditions and the party wall procedure.

We also stay with the project throughout. We manage the application through Barnet's validation and determination, respond to the case officer and to neighbour objections, negotiate amendments where that will secure approval, and — once consent is granted — help discharge the conditions, handle the CIL and prepare the construction information. The aim is a single, accountable point of contact from the first survey to a buildable, consented new home, rather than a set of drawings handed over and a client left to navigate the council alone.

If you are considering demolishing and rebuilding a house in Barnet — anywhere from Finchley, Hendon, Edgware and Golders Green to the more sensitive plots of Mill Hill, Totteridge and beyond — send us the address and what you have in mind, and we will tell you honestly what is achievable, on what terms, and how to get there.