What RAJUK approval actually involves

The question that comes up in almost every first meeting is not about design. It is how long the approval will take.

The honest answer is that it varies, and that most of the variation is not random. It comes from how complete the submission was on the day it was lodged. A set that goes in with everything resolved moves through. A set that goes in with something missing goes into a loop of queries, and each loop costs weeks.

Before you draw anything

The checks that matter most happen before design starts.

You need to know the permitted Floor Area Ratio for the plot, the required setbacks on each boundary, the maximum height, the parking requirement, and whether the road width in front of the plot supports what you are hoping to build. Road width in particular catches people out. It governs the height you are allowed, and a narrow access road can reduce a six-storey ambition to four before a single line is drawn.

We do this as a written feasibility note at the start of every project. It is a short document and it is the single most valuable thing we produce, because it is the point at which a client can still change their mind cheaply.

The submission set

The drawings themselves are not the hard part. A typical submission includes the site and layout plan showing setbacks and levels, floor plans for every level, sections, elevations, the structural drawings with the soil test report behind them, and the plumbing and drainage layout.

What slows sets down is the supporting paperwork: the ownership documents, the mutation, the up-to-date rent receipt, the soil test from an accepted laboratory, and the professional certifications from the architect and the engineer. Any one of these being out of date will hold the whole thing.

We ask clients to start gathering documents at concept stage rather than at submission stage, because chasing a mutation certificate takes as long as it takes regardless of how ready the drawings are.

Where the time actually goes

In our experience the design and drawing production is rarely the bottleneck. The bottleneck is usually one of three things.

A document that turned out to be out of date. A query raised on the set that requires a design change, which then requires the structural drawings to be revised to match. Or a client decision that changed after submission, which means withdrawing and resubmitting.

The third is the most expensive and the most avoidable. Once a set is lodged, changing your mind about the number of bedrooms is no longer a drawing revision, it is a new application.

What we do about it

We hold a formal sign-off before submission. It is a meeting where we go through the set page by page with the client and get agreement in writing that this is the scheme being lodged. It feels bureaucratic at the time. It has saved more projects from a resubmission than anything else we do.

And we keep the structural design in house and coordinated from the start, so a query that touches the architecture does not require waiting on an external consultant to redraw their part.