House Extension Plans in Warlingham: Do You Need an Application?

What you want to build	Route in Warlingham	What you pay us	What Tandridge charges
Single-storey rear extension up to 3 m deep (semi or terrace) or 4 m (detached)	Permitted development	from £1,195 for building regulations drawings and calculations	Nothing for planning
The same extension, with proof for a buyer	Permitted development plus an optional certificate	from £1,195, plus from £795 for the certificate	£274
Rear extension 3 to 6 m (semi) or 4 to 8 m (detached)	Larger home extension prior approval	from £625	£249
Two-storey side extension, wrap-around or room over the garage	Householder application	£895, or from £1,495 with building regulations and calculations	£548

Building control charges are paid to the council's building control team or an approved inspector, not to us.

Do I need planning permission to extend in Warlingham?

Not if it fits the national limits: Warlingham has no conservation area, so a house there keeps the national permitted development rights. Permitted development is the set of national rights that let a house be extended without a planning application, within fixed limits.

The Warlingham Village Design Statement confirms that "no formal conservation area has currently" been designated, and the nearby conservation areas at Woldingham Green, Great Farleigh Green and Fickleshole carry the names of neighbouring settlements. So the built-up part of Warlingham keeps the national permitted development rights that conservation areas cut back. We still check the council's map for your address, because a boundary does not follow a place name.

Under Class A of the permitted development order, a typical Warlingham house can have three things without an application (GPDO 2015, Class A).

• A single-storey rear extension up to 3 metres deep on a semi-detached or terraced house, or 4 metres on a detached one. The larger home extension prior approval stretches that to 6 or 8 metres.
• A single-storey side extension no wider than half the original house and no taller than 4 metres, if it does not face the road.
• A rear dormer adding up to 50 cubic metres of roof space on a semi-detached or detached house, under Class B (loft permitted development guide).

One rule is easy to miss: within 2 metres of any boundary, including the party wall with a semi-detached neighbour, the eaves may not be higher than 3 metres. A flat-roofed extension with a parapet on the boundary can fail it by a few centimetres, so we draw the eaves height from the survey.

Two things can take these rights away: a condition on an earlier permission for the house, and an Article 4 direction. Tandridge's directions on the national register mostly cover named fields and plots rather than streets of houses, but we read your planning history before we advise. A certificate of lawfulness is the council's formal confirmation that the work is lawful: optional proof for a buyer or lender, not a requirement. Our permitted development checker runs through the questions for free.

When do house extension plans in Warlingham need an application?

A Warlingham extension needs a householder application when it goes beyond the permitted development limits. On Warlingham's roads that can mean one of three projects.

• A two-storey side extension, for example on the semi-detached roads such as Hillbury Road and Limpsfield Road, which the village design statement describes as mainly semi-detached.
• A wrap-around or a rear extension wider than the limits allow, such as on the larger detached houses along Westhall Road, which the statement describes as almost entirely detached.
• A first floor over a garage, or a front extension beyond a porch.

Imagine an invented case (not a real job): a 1930s semi on Hillbury Road wants a 3 metre single-storey kitchen extension at the back and a bedroom over the side garage. The kitchen is permitted development on its own. The room over the garage is a two-storey side extension, which needs an application. Drawn together, both go into one householder application at £645 drawings + £250 survey (£895 total), and the village design statement's advice to set the first floor back from the front wall shapes the design.

What does the Warlingham Village Design Statement ask for?

The Warlingham Village Design Statement is the local design guide for the parish. It says plainly that it is not an adopted supplementary planning document, but it is written for Tandridge's officers and councillors as well as applicants (Warlingham Village Design Statement). On extensions it asks for four things.

• an extension is proportionate to the original house, as an excessively large addition looks unbalanced;
• materials echo the original, and features such as gables, bays and dormers are repeated with care;
• side extensions avoid overlooking and loss of light next door;
• where a frontage is widened, by a side extension or over a garage, the new part may need to be set back from the front wall to avoid a "terraced" appearance.

It also lists Warlingham's materials: local red facing bricks such as Dorking Reds, red clay vertical tiling, white or cream render, flint dressings, stained horizontal boarding, and roofs mostly of red or brown plain clay tiles. It warns that swapping small plain tiles for large interlocking tiles can spoil an intricate roof. We draw the extension in materials that match the house and say so on the drawings.

Does the Green Belt affect my Warlingham house?

The Green Belt affects houses in the southern part of Warlingham, not the village centre. The village design statement says the southern portion skirts the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, now the Surrey Hills National Landscape, and is predominantly Green Belt. Tandridge's Policy DP8 names Warlingham, with Caterham, Oxted, Whyteleafe and Woldingham, among the settlements where infill on garden land can be considered. Houses inside the built-up area are judged on design and neighbours; we check the Policies Map for your address.

For a house in the Green Belt, Tandridge measures an extension by external volume against the original building. The original building is the house as it stood on 31 December 1968, or as first built if later (Tandridge Local Plan Part 2, paragraphs 13.2 and 13.4). Earlier additions count against it. Our Godstone post sets out how that calculation works.

What else does Tandridge ask for?

Tandridge's householder checklist, revised on 1 September 2025, asks for a completed Biodiversity Checklist with every application, CIL forms, a statement on surface water, site photographs, and a unique number and scale bar on every drawing (Tandridge validation checklist). Where there are trees or hedges on the site or next door, it also asks for a BS 5837 tree survey covering trees within 15 metres of the boundary. The design statement describes south-west Warlingham as having large gardens and numerous mature trees, so a tree survey is a real possibility on Westhall Road and the roads around it. Ours is a separate fee, from £445, and is not part of the planning drawing price.

An invalid application costs time and money in Tandridge. The council allows 28 days to supply what is missing, after which the application is withdrawn and 25% of the planning fee is kept (same checklist). We send the Biodiversity Checklist and CIL forms with the drawings. Where Tandridge's checklist wants more than a short note on surface water, our SuDS statement is a separate fee, from £295.

What do a certificate and an application each add?

A planning application adds about eight weeks to most Warlingham extensions. Tandridge decided 206 of its 221 householder applications within 8 weeks between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026 (MHCLG live table PS2). A certificate of lawfulness is a separate application with its own fee of £274, and a permitted development extension needs neither before building control.

More on the council is on our Tandridge page and our Surrey page, and the service on our house extensions page. Nearby, see extension plans in Caterham, and just over the London border, two-storey extensions in Sanderstead. Send us your address and we will tell you which of the four routes in the table fits.

Frequently asked questions

Is Warlingham in a conservation area? No. None of Tandridge's 19 conservation areas is in Warlingham, so the extra limits on permitted development that apply in places like Godstone or Lingfield do not apply here.

Can I build a loft dormer in Warlingham without planning permission? Yes, at the rear of a semi-detached or detached house within the Class B limits, up to 50 cubic metres of extra roof space. We check the planning history first, because an old condition can remove the right.

Does the Warlingham Village Design Statement have to be followed? It is not an adopted supplementary planning document, but it is written for the council's officers and sets out what fits the village. Following it makes an application easier to support.

What if my extension is permitted development? Then you do not need planning drawings. You need building regulations drawings and structural calculations, from £1,195 with us. A certificate of lawfulness, from £795, is optional but proves the work was lawful, which helps when you sell.

Is the eaves height rule different next to a party wall? No. The 3 metre eaves limit within 2 metres of a boundary applies to every boundary, the party wall included.