Every good planning application starts with accurate existing drawings. We laser-measure your property and produce to-scale floor plans, elevations and sections — the foundation for extensions, conversions, lease plans and any drawing your council will ever ask for.
A measured building survey in London is the unglamorous step that decides whether everything after it works. Planning applications, building regulations packages, structural calculations, lease plans, party wall awards — all of them are drawn on top of the existing drawings. If those are wrong by even a hundred millimetres, the error compounds: a proposed extension that breaches a boundary it should clear, a staircase that cannot achieve compliant headroom, a beam specified shorter than the wall it must span.
That is why we never draw proposals over estate-agent floor plans or scaled-up Land Registry titles. We measure the building itself, using laser distance meters accurate to roughly 1 mm and, where the geometry demands it, point-cloud capture — then translate the data into precise CAD drawings held to a survey tolerance of around 10 mm: floor plans, elevations and sections that show your property exactly as it stands, at recognised scales your council validates without question.
London's housing stock makes this discipline essential. Victorian terraces lean, their solid one-brick walls run to around 225 mm, ceiling heights that reach 2.4 metres on the ground floor drop upstairs, floor levels shift mid-building and almost no wall is truly square. A measured survey captures the reality — including the awkward parts — so the design work that follows solves real constraints instead of discovering them on site.
From one-bedroom flats in Hackney to whole mansion blocks in Kensington, our surveyors measure London property every working day — and our drawing team turns site data into council-ready existing drawings fast.
A tight, repeatable process from booking to delivered drawings — designed to feed straight into your planning application.
Tell us the property and the purpose — extension, conversion, lease plan, refurbishment. The end use determines what we measure and to what level of detail, so you never pay for data you don't need.
Our surveyor measures every relevant space with laser instruments: room dimensions, ceiling heights, wall thicknesses, window and door positions, external elevations and levels. Most homes take a single visit.
Site data becomes precise existing drawings — floor plans, elevations and sections at 1:50 or 1:100 — checked against the survey notes and photographs before release.
You receive PDF drawings ready for a planning submission plus CAD files any designer, engineer or party wall surveyor can work from — one survey, every downstream use.
Tell us about your project and get a fixed, no-obligation quote back within one working day. If you don't need planning permission at all, we'll tell you that too — for free.
A measured building survey produces accurate, to-scale drawings of a property as it currently exists — typically floor plans, elevations and sections — measured on site rather than copied from old records. A standard residential survey package includes:
Accurate existing drawings are an asset, not a formality. Commission them once and they underpin every project the property will ever see.
Every householder and full application must include existing drawings alongside the proposed. Councils reject submissions where the two visibly disagree — accuracy here protects your whole application.
Designers can only maximise your space if they know exactly what exists. Real ceiling heights and wall lines decide whether a loft, basement or side return actually works.
Compliant lease plans are drawn from measured data, not sketches. If you are splitting a property into flats, the same survey feeds both the planning and legal drawings.
Engineers size beams and foundations from surveyed dimensions. Wall thicknesses and spans taken from a measured survey remove guesswork — and costly over-specification — from structural calculations.
Where the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies, accurate existing drawings help define notifiable works precisely and support the schedule of condition.
For landlords and portfolio owners, measured drawings provide a reliable base for refurbishment pricing, HMO licensing layouts and future planning applications.
The terminology trips people up, so it is worth being precise. A measured building survey records dimensions and geometry — it tells you what shape the building is, drawn to scale. It is not a condition survey: it will not report on damp, subsidence or the state of the roof, which is the territory of an RICS homebuyer report or structural inspection. If you are buying a property, you may want both; if you are designing an extension or conversion, the measured survey is the one your project cannot start without.
It also pays to commission the measured survey from the team that will produce your proposed drawings. When surveyor and designer sit apart, ambiguities in the survey — an unmeasured cupboard, an assumed wall thickness — surface as design queries and delay. Because our surveyors and drawing technicians work as one team, the existing drawings arrive ready for design, and your planning application moves straight from measured survey to proposed scheme without a handover gap. Call 020 7864 7245 or request a quote and we will scope the right survey for your property.
A measured building survey is an on-site measurement of a property using laser instruments, converted into accurate scale drawings — existing floor plans, elevations and sections. It records the building as it truly stands, and forms the base layer for planning applications, design work, structural calculations and lease plans.
Yes, in practice. London councils require existing and proposed drawings to scale in every householder and full application, and validation teams check them. Drawings based on estate-agent plans or guesswork risk rejection at validation or, worse, approval of a scheme that cannot be built as drawn.
Most London houses and flats are measured in a single visit of one to three hours, depending on size and complexity. The CAD drawings — floor plans, elevations and sections — typically follow within 3 to 5 days, so the survey rarely sits on your project's critical path.
We measure with laser distance instruments and cross-check dimensions on site, producing drawings at 1:50 or 1:100 to standard survey tolerances. That level of accuracy is what planning validation, building regulations design and structural engineering all rely on — and it far exceeds any legacy floor plan.
Yes. We coordinate access with tenants or agents and work around occupants — surveying is non-invasive and requires no furniture moving beyond access to walls and windows. For portfolios, we can schedule multiple properties efficiently across London in planned visits.
Yes. Every measured survey is delivered as council-ready PDFs plus editable CAD files. That means any designer, structural engineer or party wall surveyor you engage later can work directly from our drawings, and you never pay to have the property measured twice.
Local drawings tuned to each council's design guidance, with live borough approval rates. Pick your area:
Measured building surveys in Richmond upon Thames — laser-accurate existing floor plans, elevations and sections every design and application is built on.
View Richmond upon Thames →Measured building surveys in Camden — laser-accurate existing floor plans, elevations and sections every design and application is built on.
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View Hounslow →Measured building surveys in Kensington and Chelsea — laser-accurate existing floor plans, elevations and sections every design and application is built on.
View Kensington and Chelsea →Measured building surveys in Westminster — laser-accurate existing floor plans, elevations and sections every design and application is built on.
View Westminster →Measured building surveys in Merton — laser-accurate existing floor plans, elevations and sections every design and application is built on.
View Merton →Measured building surveys in Barking and Dagenham — laser-accurate existing floor plans, elevations and sections every design and application is built on.
View Barking and Dagenham →Measured building surveys in Greenwich — laser-accurate existing floor plans, elevations and sections every design and application is built on.
View Greenwich →Answer five quick questions and get a free planning score for your exact address — instantly. Then, if you want the full picture, unlock the detailed analysis: your council's live approval rates, local precedents, constraints on your street and a step-by-step route to permission.