Chartered Drawings, Without the Architect's Fee
DrawingsDirect is an architectural technology practice. We draw the planning and building-regulation packages London councils approve — for roughly 30% less than a comparable architect's fee, on a fixed price agreed before we start.
What an architectural technologist actually is
Most homeowners planning an extension or a loft assume they need an architect. For the overwhelming majority of London home projects, they don’t — they need a chartered architectural technologist. Technologists are the discipline within the built environment that specialises in the technical design and detailing of buildings: how a building is actually put together, and how that gets documented well enough for a council to approve it and a builder to price and build from it.
The professional body is the Chartered Institute of Architectural Technologists; the chartered grade carries the post-nominal MCIAT. A council’s planning department does not require drawings to be produced by an architect. It requires drawings that are accurate, correctly scaled, properly annotated and compliant with local policy. That is precisely the technologist’s remit — which is why our packages are accepted across all 33 London boroughs on exactly the same footing.
Architects earn their fee on projects that turn on spatial concept and aesthetics — a difficult site, a bespoke new build, a complex remodelling brief. A rear extension on a Victorian terrace in Wandsworth is not that project. It is a well-understood building type meeting a well-documented set of borough rules, and it rewards technical precision rather than concept work. Paying architect rates for it is paying for a service you will not use.
How we work
Every job runs to the same three-stage shape, and you know the total cost before stage one begins.
Measured survey. We survey the property and produce accurate existing-condition drawings. Nothing downstream is reliable if this stage is approximate, so we do not work from estate-agent floor plans or sketches.
Design and planning drawings. We draw the proposal, check it against your borough’s local plan, conservation-area status and any Article 4 direction, and prepare the full planning submission — existing and proposed plans, elevations, sections, site and location plans. Where the work is permitted development we will tell you, and route you to a lawful development certificate instead of a full application.
Building regulations package. Once planning is settled, the construction-stage drawings and specification follow: the technical set your builder prices from and building control signs off.
The commitments we make
Fixed fees. The price is agreed in writing before work starts and does not move because the job took longer than we expected. That risk is ours.
Drawings in about seven days. Typical turnaround from survey to your first full drawing set is around a week — not the multi-month timelines larger practices quote when a domestic job sits behind their commercial work.
Free redraws to approval. If a case officer comes back with comments, we redraw and resubmit at no extra cost. We are not finished when the drawings are sent; we are finished when the decision notice arrives.
London only. We work exclusively across the 33 London boroughs. Planning is intensely local — the Article 4 direction that kills a project in one borough does not exist in the next — and depth beats reach.
Across the work to date we run a roughly 96% first-time approval rate over more than 2,400 drawings delivered, and we carry £2m professional indemnity insurance.
Talk to us
Tell us the property and what you are hoping to build and we will come back within one working day with a fixed quote and a free planning appraisal — including an honest answer on whether you need permission at all. Call 020 7864 7245, email [email protected], or use the contact page. You can also browse everything we draw, read the planning guides, or see completed London projects.