Drawing plans

[Lawrence Zarb]

I intend to build a garage on the side of my semi detached house.

Who would be best to draw up the plans, an architect, civil engineer or someone else?

[Mary Fisher]

For the local authority you just need a simple drawing with dimensions, you could do that yourself.

We're not qualified architects or civil engineers but we designed and built our own garage ourselves (concrete foundations, concrete block walls with piers, almost flat roof), it's been great.

Mary

[Roger Mills]

It's not that difficult to draw your own plans, especially if you have access to some simple CAD software. [This is UK.D-I-Y after all!]

If you want to employ someone, look for an architectural technician. They can do plans for both planning permission and building regs approval for a lot less than a fully fledged architect would charge.

Whether you actually need planning permission and/or building regs approval depends on a lot of factors. For example, if the garage is detached and has a floor area of no more than 30 M^2 (plus a couple of other conditions) it won't be subject to building regs. If it is attached to the house, it

*will*. If it doesn't project in front of the house, and if you haven't already used any permitted development capacity, it may not be subject to planning consent. Best to ask at the Planning and Building Control departments at your local council. I have always found them to be very helpful.

Are you building it yourself? If so, and it turns out that you don't need planning permission or building regs approval, something on the back of an envelope would probably suffice! If you're employing someone to build it, it's important that it's fully specified to make sure that the builder has no wiggle room once he has quoted.

[Guy King]

The message from "Lawrence Zarb" contains these words:

Google sketch-up. They're quite happy with DIY plans so long as they have all the right dimensions on.

[Lawrence Zarb]

THanks for your reply Roger,

The garage will be attached to the house, and the outside wall will replace the fence running along the pavement (as my house is on the corner of two roads)

I will be building it myself, and am sure I will need BC and planning permission