Building work in Croydon: area guide

Croydon Council is the planning and building control authority for Croydon, which covers CR0, CR2, CR5, CR7, CR8, SE19 and SE25 and takes in Purley, Coulsdon and Addiscombe. This is our area guide to building work in the borough; for whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Croydon.

About 168,270 homes are listed for Croydon, and the mix is 56% houses to 44% flats, with 48% built after 1945, 24% in 1919 to 1939 and 28% earlier. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 45 statistical areas in Croydon. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Planning and building control in Croydon

What Croydon Council publishes about building work in the borough, with each point linked to the council page it comes from:

• Croydon Council states there are currently 21 conservation areas in Croydon. croydon.gov.uk
• Croydon's Chatsworth Road Conservation Area Article 4 direction removes permitted development rights for the extension, improvement or other alteration of a dwelling house. croydon.gov.uk
• The Chatsworth Road Article 4 direction also removes rights for all roof alterations and for a porch outside any external door of a dwelling house. croydon.gov.uk
• Croydon Council states there are currently 168 statutory listed buildings in Croydon. croydon.gov.uk
• Croydon's Householder and small-scale development pre-application service costs £300 (plus VAT). croydon.gov.uk
• Croydon Council's own building control service inspects building work to make sure it complies with the current building regulations. croydon.gov.uk
• Croydon accepts a building notice for minor domestic building work, submitted and paid for online. croydon.gov.uk
• Croydon says a full plans application is for major domestic works and commercial projects and requires detailed drawings of the proposed construction. croydon.gov.uk
• Croydon's validation list says an FRA for basement development in an area at risk of ground water flood risk should include a basement impact assessment. croydon.gov.uk

56% of Croydon's homes are houses, which keep householder permitted development: a single-storey rear extension within the size limits can usually go ahead without an application, in a conservation area too unless an Article 4 direction removes it. The 44% that are flats have no householder permitted development, so their extensions and most external changes need planning permission from Croydon Council. Taking out a wall or a chimney breast is building regulations work, not planning, unless the building is listed.

Croydon covers a lot of ground and a lot of eras, so first work out which one your house is. Thornton Heath, South Norwood and Addiscombe are largely Victorian and Edwardian terraces in CR0, CR7, SE25 and SE19, while Purley and Coulsdon in CR8 and CR5 are interwar semis and substantial detached houses on hilly, sloping plots, and nearly half the borough's homes were built after 1945, many of them flats. The northern streets need patient repair of old fabric, the southern ones space planning and level changes.

Purley hills mean levels, Thornton Heath terraces mean steel

In the south of the borough the plots slope and the houses are bigger. The level change between house and garden is the recurring problem, solved with retaining structures, stepped terraces or a raised floor worked out at design stage, so it is a house extension job first. Detached properties also carry a larger permitted development allowance for a single-storey rear addition, commonly four metres rather than three.

Northwards the housing is older, denser and terraced: solid brick, shallow foundations, suspended timber floors and a cold rear addition. The opened-up ground floor comes first, a load-bearing wall removal job on an engineer's beam, then a Part P rewire, heating and Part L insulation, which together make a home renovation. Damp is common here and is usually a failed gutter, a raised path or impermeable render, so we find the cause before quoting a cure.

How inspections actually run on a Croydon job

Building control is staged, not one visit at the end. Work is registered before it starts, then inspected at the open excavation, foundation concrete, damp proof course and floor slab, drainage before backfill, structural elements once installed, insulation before it is covered, and completion. An extension meets every stage. An RSJ installation meets the structural and completion visits.

We book each visit, meet the inspector on site and keep the records. Croydon Council building control or a registered building control approver carries out the inspections. It matters at resale: a completion certificate is what a buyer's solicitor asks for, and reconstructing missing paperwork years later is far harder than getting it right during the job.

Popular starting points in Croydon: kitchen renovation in Croydon, house extensions across Croydon, builders in London and Listed Building Renovation.