Building notice or full plans application to building control

If you are extending a house in England you can choose between a building notice or a full plans application to building control, and the choice decides whether anyone checks your drawings before the first brick goes down. A building notice lets you start work two days after telling the council, with no approval of plans. A full plans application puts the drawings in front of a building control surveyor who issues a decision on them, usually within five weeks. Both routes end with the same inspections on site and the same standards under the Building Regulations 2010.

This is separate from planning permission. Building control approval is about structure, fire safety, drainage, insulation, ventilation and access. Planning permission is about whether the development is acceptable in land use terms. You can hold one without the other, and you need both where both apply.

What a building notice involves

You give the council a short notice describing the work, with a block plan, and pay the charge. There is no plan check and no approval document. Work can start two days after the notice is given, and the notice remains valid for three years.

The surveyor inspects at the stages they specify: excavation, foundations, damp proof course, drainage, structural elements, insulation and completion. Any problem is identified on site, at the point where putting it right is most disruptive.

This route suits straightforward work on a dwelling where the detailing is conventional and the builder has done the same thing many times. A single storey rear extension with a traditional strip foundation and a standard roof build up is the classic case.

It is not available for everything. A building notice cannot be used where the work relates to a building to which the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies, which rules out most commercial and shared residential premises. It cannot be used where the work includes erecting a building fronting onto a private street. And it cannot be used where the building will be put up over or close to a public sewer, which is the drainage situation covered by requirement H4.

What a full plans application gives you

You deposit full drawings and specifications, including structural calculations, and the council checks them against the Regulations. The statutory period for a decision is five weeks, extendable to two months with your written agreement.

Three outcomes are possible: approval, approval subject to conditions or requirements, or rejection with reasons. An approval is a decision you can hand to a lender, a buyer's solicitor, a warranty provider or a structural engineer, and it is the reason most people building anything beyond a simple extension choose this route.

The practical advantages are easy to understate.

Problems in the design are found at drawing stage, when changing them costs a revised sheet rather than a rebuilt opening.

The builder prices from approved drawings, which removes a whole category of variation claim.

A plans certificate can be requested, confirming the plans were deposited and approved, which helps on sale.

Where a structural opening, a steel beam, an unusual roof geometry, a basement, underpinning, a flat roof terrace or a change of use is involved, the plan check earns its fee.

Charges and who sets them

Building control charges are set by each authority under a published scheme, not nationally. A full plans application is normally charged in two parts, a plan charge on deposit and an inspection charge on first inspection, while a building notice carries a single charge. The totals for comparable work are usually similar, so cost is rarely the deciding factor.

Ask for the authority's current scale of charges rather than working from a figure quoted elsewhere, because the bands are revised and most authorities publish a table by extension floor area. These charges sit alongside the planning application fee, which is a separate payment on a separate statutory scale, and our note on building regulations fees against planning fees sets out how the two interact.

There is a third route. Instead of the council you can appoint a registered building control approver, the private sector option that replaced approved inspectors under the Building Safety Act 2022 reforms, by giving a joint initial notice to the authority. All building inspectors must now be registered with the Building Safety Regulator, and higher risk buildings are dealt with by that regulator rather than by local building control at all.

Inspections and the completion certificate

Both routes run the same inspection regime. Notify the surveyor at the stages they ask for, and do not cover anything that needs inspecting. Foundations poured and backfilled before the surveyor has seen the excavation is the most common and most expensive mistake on a householder job.

At the end, after a satisfactory final inspection, the council issues a completion certificate. That document is what a conveyancing solicitor asks for when the house is sold, and its absence is what turns a straightforward sale into a retention or an indemnity policy. Chase it. Councils do not always issue it unprompted, and builders have no interest in whether you have it.

Keep the certificate with the planning decision notice, the approved drawings and any structural calculations in one place. It is a thin file and it is worth money at sale.

Work already done without approval

Unauthorised building work carried out on or after 11 November 1985 can be regularised. You apply to the council for a regularisation certificate, pay the charge, and open up the work so it can be inspected, which may mean lifting floors or removing finishes.

The council is not obliged to grant it and will apply the standards in force when the work was done. Where elements cannot be inspected or cannot be brought up to standard, you may end up with a certificate that excludes parts of the work, or none at all. The private building control route cannot be used for regularisation.

Regularisation does not cure a planning breach. Those are separate regimes with separate time limits, and a Lawful Development Certificate under section 191 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 is the only formal way to confirm that works or a use are lawful in planning terms.

Running the two consents in parallel

Order matters less than people think, but there is a sensible sequence. Get the planning position settled first, because a planning refusal or a design change forced by a case officer makes any building control work wasted. Where the work is permitted development, confirm the limits carefully before you commit.

Then deposit full plans while the planning application is being determined if the design is fixed, since the five week plan check runs happily alongside the eight week planning period.

Where a planning statement or a design and access statement is needed for the planning submission, that drafting is a different exercise from the building control package, and the two sets of drawings serve different readers. Planning drawings show the appearance and the relationship to neighbours. Building control drawings show the construction. Issuing one set for both is where coordination errors start.

One caution on devolved nations. This article describes England. Scotland operates a building warrant system with its own procedure, Wales has its own building regulations arrangements, and Northern Ireland has separate regulations, so check the national position rather than assuming the English routes apply.

This is general guidance, not legal advice; check the position with your local planning authority, your building control body or a qualified professional before relying on it. PlanScope provides AI-assisted draft reports for planning applications. Reports should be reviewed before submission. We do not guarantee planning approval. To see which planning documents your extension will need, browse the report types by category.