Planning law has changed  over recent years to encourage more development of private homes while the local authorities struggle with the lack of housing.  You’ll find most extensions and conversions can be made through what’s known as permitted development and using the neighbour consent scheme which is available to most householders in the UK. Whilst it’s still a specialist field to navigate it’s rare that you’d need architects’ drawings to meet the criteria.  Architects are required for works where planning permission is required but for PD they are an often an unnecessarily expensive service. At Clover we can oversee all local-authority permissions to build and are fully aware of what meets permitted development guidelines.  For further information please take a look here.  HomeBuilding.co.uk have an excellent article on what’s allowed under PD and the exceptions that might remove PD rights.