Architect cost

[jane1511]

Hi, we are planning a garage conversion / knocking through to form an open plan kitchen diner. Just had a quote from an architect and it was £1500 plus VAT which is more than I'd expected but maybe I'm being optimistic. How much has anyone paid for an architect for a similar project? Thanks.

I'd be interested to see responses to this as well!

I think we're paying our draughtsman (so not an actual architect) about £400 and then another £100 for further drawings

Why do you need an architect? Would an architectural technician not be better, if it's straightforward? Doesn't sound as though there's much scope for design, which is what you're paying an architect for, when what you really need is someone to produce some technical drawings for builders to cost and work off.

If you know what you want, you don't need an architect. You can get a plan drawer to draw plans to your spec which are suitable to put forward to the planning dept. Our biggest expense at this stage was the building regs, which add £££.'s.

I was under the impression the building regs stuff costs about £600 max. No?
There don't seem to be many architectural technicians around here. In theory that would be fine though.

Our plans are complicated so we have an architect doing our plans, he will submit them to planning and be with us from beginning to the end of the build.
He is charging us about £2300.
We have regular contact and he has been to see us 4 times so far and we haven't submitted to planning yet.

As far as I can remember our building regs were about 1k.

That sounds really cheap ihatethecold. Though it does depend a lot on how involved he'll be through the build. (If he's charging averagish rates he's allowed barely 40 hours time wise.)

Placemarking

You probably don't need planning if you are only converting your garage.
You should get a builder round to quote but they won't need to work off of plans.

If you are not extending the footprint of the house you will be fine.

In my area i can ring the planning officer for a chat and he looks on google earth for the property to see if we would need planning.

We're having loft conversion done at the moment- planning application and construction drawings came in at about £2k. We submitted our own application for building control and our builder liaises directly with the council- the building control application fee will depend on the type and scale of work; ours was £800ish