The full drawing set for a Wigan application — location and block plans, existing and proposed floor plans, elevations and sections, drawn to Wigan Council's validation checklist so the pack is accepted first time, delivered in days and revised free until your decision, with a free approval-odds check first.
Wigan Council granted 89% of the householder planning decisions it made in its latest published year — 2 points above the 87% England-wide householder average. A large share of the borough is Green Belt, so extension and outbuilding scale is tightly held on affected plots away from the urban cores, which is where a policy-literate drawing pack earns its keep. Its dominant Victorian (1837–1901), Edwardian (1901–1910), interwar (1918–1939) and postwar (1945–1970) housing stock sets the design brief on most streets.
Class A and Class B set the thresholds — a rear dormer to 40m³ on a terrace or 50m³ on a semi or detached, and a single-storey rear extension to 3m on a terrace or 4m on a detached house — beyond which Wigan Council needs a full application. Wigan carries at least one Article 4 direction, and conservation areas including Wigan Town Centre, Wigan Pier and Standish remove those rights outright, so we confirm your exact address before a line is drawn. A validated householder application in Wigan is determined against an 8-week statutory target.
Standish (affluent commuter village with a conservation-area core mixing stone and brick with modern estates), Leigh (former cotton and mining town with canal heritage, dense terraces and a town-centre conservation area), Ashton-in-Makerfield (southern coalfield town of brick terraces and interwar suburban growth), Hindley (mining township of terraced streets with a town-centre conservation area), Tyldesley (former mill and mining town of brick terraces with a town-centre conservation area) and Haigh (semi-rural estate village adjoining Haigh Woodland Park with protected historic character) — these are the Wigan pockets our drawings cover most. Heritage designations here include Wigan Town Centre, Wigan Pier, Standish, Haigh Village, Leigh Town Centre and Tyldesley Town Centre. Wigan Council weighs each proposal against Places for Everyone (the Greater Manchester joint plan, effective March 2024) alongside the Wigan Local Plan Core Strategy and the emerging district Local Plan, where the former coalfield legacy of the Wigan Flashes and low-lying mossland brings ground-stability, contamination and ecology constraints to development sites. Converted terraced flats occur across the town centres of Wigan and Leigh, and those units carry no householder permitted-development rights.. On roofs the borough is Welsh slate on the Victorian and Edwardian brick terraces and interlocking concrete tile on the interwar and post-war semis, over Victorian and Edwardian coalfield and millworkers' red-brick terraces, interwar semis and council-estate housing and older stone cores in the estate villages.
Whatever you are building, Wigan Council decides it from the same core set. A location plan at 1:1250 fixes the site on the map with the red-line boundary; a block plan at 1:500 shows the property in its plot; then existing and proposed floor plans and elevations at 1:100 or 1:50 show the house as it is and as it will be. Larger schemes add a section and, where policy requires, a design and access statement. Miss one and the application is returned invalid before an officer has looked at it.
The drawings are also the argument. Wigan Council assesses each proposal against Places for Everyone (the Greater Manchester joint plan, effective March 2024) alongside the Wigan Local Plan Core Strategy and the emerging district Local Plan, and the elevations are where the case is won or lost — ridge and eaves heights, window positions, materials and how the change reads from the street. On Wigan's stock, which runs to Victorian and Edwardian coalfield and millworkers' red-brick terraces, interwar semis and council-estate housing and older stone cores in the estate villages, the same scheme is drawn differently to answer the concerns officers raise here. A large share of the borough is Green Belt, so extension and outbuilding scale is tightly held on affected plots away from the urban cores, so the pack is built to pre-empt exactly that.
Where the property sits in a conservation area — Wigan Town Centre, Wigan Pier, Standish, Haigh Village, Leigh Town Centre and Tyldesley Town Centre among Wigan's — validation is stricter still, often demanding heritage detail and sometimes additional plans. Wigan's borough-wide Article 4 direction, in force from August 2025, removes permitted-development rights for the change of use from a house (C3) to a small HMO (C4), so all new HMOs now need planning permission, and localised conservation-area directions add further householder controls. We confirm the designation before drawing so the pack meets the higher bar first time.
Wigan Council validates against a published checklist before it assesses anything. A typical householder application needs each of these, correctly scaled and labelled:
We draw the complete set — location and block plans, existing and proposed plans, elevations and any section — to Wigan Council's checklist, then lodge it on the Planning Portal, manage validation and answer case-officer queries so the application is decided on its merits, not bounced on a technicality.
Below is Wigan Council's real householder decision record, drawn from official planning statistics and refreshed as new data lands. Wigan approves close to nine in ten planning applications, with its extensive Green Belt, former-coalfield ground conditions and canal-side conservation areas the main constraints on householder schemes. A complete, correctly scaled pack that answers those concerns on the elevations is validated faster and refused less often than one that leaves them for the officer to raise.
Source: MHCLG planning application statistics (householder decisions, England, 1 April 2025 - 31 March 2026). Compare every borough on our London approval-rate league table.
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.
Two different things sink an application, and they happen at two different stages. First is validation: a missing block plan, an unscaled elevation, no red line, no north point — Wigan Council returns the whole submission and the clock never starts. Getting the pack right at this stage is purely mechanical, and it is where a lot of self-submitted Wigan applications lose weeks. We draw to the checklist so this never happens.
Second is the planning judgement itself, once the pack is valid. The former coalfield legacy of the Wigan Flashes and low-lying mossland brings ground-stability, contamination and ecology constraints to development sites. Across Standish, Leigh and Ashton-in-Makerfield the recurring refusals are about scale, overlooking and how the proposal sits against its neighbours — all of which are settled on the drawings. We draw the scheme to answer them before submission rather than after a refusal.
The application pack is the same discipline whatever the project. A few of the Wigan neighbourhoods and property types we prepare drawings for most often:
Planning drawings for Standish's affluent commuter village with a conservation-area core mixing stone and brick with modern estates — scaled, validation-ready and drawn to Wigan Council's guidance.
Planning drawings for Leigh's former cotton and mining town with canal heritage, dense terraces and a town-centre conservation area — scaled, validation-ready and drawn to Wigan Council's guidance.
Planning drawings for Ashton-in-Makerfield's southern coalfield town of brick terraces and interwar suburban growth — scaled, validation-ready and drawn to Wigan Council's guidance.
Planning drawings for Hindley's mining township of terraced streets with a town-centre conservation area — scaled, validation-ready and drawn to Wigan Council's guidance.
Planning drawings for Tyldesley's former mill and mining town of brick terraces with a town-centre conservation area — scaled, validation-ready and drawn to Wigan Council's guidance.
Planning drawings for Haigh's semi-rural estate village adjoining Haigh Woodland Park with protected historic character — scaled, validation-ready and drawn to Wigan Council's guidance.
The route decides what Wigan Council needs and how long it takes. This is how the common Wigan routes compare.
| Route | When it applies | Core drawings | Typical decision |
|---|---|---|---|
| Householder application | Extensions and alterations to a single house | Location, block, existing & proposed plans and elevations | About 8 weeks |
| Full application | Flats, new units, changes of use | As householder plus site plan and often a section | 8–13 weeks |
| Lawful development certificate | Confirming a scheme is permitted development | Existing & proposed plans and elevations to prove PD limits | About 8 weeks |
| Prior approval | Larger single-storey rear extensions | Plans and elevations plus neighbour notification | About 6 weeks |
In a conservation area such as Wigan Town Centre and Wigan Pier, householder permitted-development rights are often restricted, so a full application and heritage detail may be required.
A fixed process built around how Wigan Council validates and decides — most drawing sets are submission-ready within seven days of survey.
Send us your Wigan postcode and what you want to build. We confirm your conservation and Article 4 status, tell you which application route applies, and score your odds against live Wigan Council decisions.
We measure the property and plot so the existing plans and elevations are accurate to the millimetre — the base every proposed drawing and every officer judgement is built on.
Chartered designers produce the full validation pack — location and block plans, existing and proposed plans, elevations, any section and a design and access statement — drawn to Wigan Council's checklist.
We lodge the application on the Planning Portal, manage validation and case-officer queries, and revise the drawings free until Wigan Council issues its decision.
Wigan Council validates a householder application against a set list: a location plan at 1:1250 with a red-line boundary, a block plan at 1:500, and existing and proposed floor plans and elevations at 1:100 or 1:50, each with a scale bar and north point. Larger schemes and most conservation-area work also need a design and access statement. If any of these is missing or unscaled the application is returned invalid before it is assessed.
Almost always because the drawing pack is incomplete or wrongly scaled — a missing block plan, an elevation with no scale, no red line on the location plan, no north point. Wigan Council checks the pack against its validation list before an officer ever assesses the scheme, so these purely technical gaps cost weeks. Drawing to the checklist from the outset is the simplest way to avoid a return.
Yes. We prepare the full drawing set, lodge it on the Planning Portal on your behalf, pay the Wigan Council fee where you prefer us to, and then manage validation and case-officer questions through to the decision. You get the reference number and updates without dealing with the portal or the council yourself.
A householder application is a statutory eight weeks from validation, and a full application eight to thirteen weeks depending on scale. The date that matters is validation, not submission — an invalid pack never starts the clock. Because we draw to Wigan Council's checklist the application validates quickly, so the statutory period begins without the delay a returned pack causes.
You do not strictly need a planning application, but scaled existing and proposed drawings are still worth having: a lawful development certificate from Wigan Council proves the scheme is permitted development, which lenders and buyers increasingly ask for, and your builder needs the drawings to price and build. In a conservation area such as Wigan Town Centre and Wigan Pier, permitted-development rights are often removed, so a full application may be needed after all — we confirm which before you commit.
We price each Wigan job individually — the scope of the survey and the size of the drawing set vary from a simple rear extension to a whole-house scheme — and send a fixed, no-obligation quote within one working day. It covers the full validation pack with free revisions until Wigan Council decides. The Wigan Council application fee is separate and paid to the council. Call 020 7864 7245 to start.
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Same fixed quotes, same fast drawings — wherever your project is.