Drawn village confines, ironstone farmsteads and open countryside. The rules here are unusually specific.
Consented and delivered, on a house the practice designed years earlier.
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Sixty-six bedrooms, taken from first design through to completion.
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Two consents five days apart, and a Grade II farmstead now on site.
View projectDaventry decides on a joint core strategy from 2014 and a settlements and countryside plan from 2020, while a single new plan for the whole of West Northamptonshire is due to be submitted for examination by the end of the year. Six things shape most schemes here.
A joint core strategy adopted in 2014 and the Daventry settlements and countryside plan adopted in 2020 decide every application. A single new plan for the whole of West Northamptonshire is due to be submitted for examination this year.
Read moreThe plan sorts each settlement into a tier and draws confines on an inset map. Outside that line only a listed set of circumstances is acceptable.
Read moreThe council reported 5.5 years at April 2025. An inspector did not accept it at appeal and put supply nearer 4.6, which is the figure the confines policy turns on.
Read morePolicy RA6 supports nine forms of development in the open countryside. Replacement, heritage re-use and exceptional design are three of them.
Read moreTwenty-six conservation areas, more than 1,500 listed buildings and a registered battlefield. The county historic environment record must be consulted as a minimum.
Read moreForty per cent affordable in the villages and 25 per cent in the town, from ten homes. A rural site below the affordable threshold pays three times the levy rate of one above it.
Read moreWest Northamptonshire Council policy, correct at August 2026. The new local plan is in preparation and the housing land position is restated every year, so we re-check them at the point of application.
A Grade II farmhouse and three curtilage-listed outbuildings in open countryside, consented as one home of about 477 square metres. Listed building consent on 20 February 2025, full planning permission five days later.
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Every application we make is a matter of public record on a council planning register. Ours reach more than 100 planning authorities across the UK. The practice has been working since 1970.
Developers, homeowners and commercial clients all need the same first answer: what will this site take? The route to it changes with the project.
Village sites, replacement dwellings and small rural schemes, from residential architects who design what the confines and the landscape policies will carry, with the planning case built in from the first sketch.
Residential developmentExtensions, remodels and conversions, including listed farmhouses and ironstone cottages inside a conservation area, designed around how you live.
Private homesFarm buildings, workshops, care and community buildings and changes of use, from commercial architects who argue the case with the evidence West Northamptonshire expects to see.
Commercial workA Grade II farmstead at Barby consented twice in one week. A house at Weedon extended and built. Yours would not be our first ironstone elevation, or our first set of drawn confines.
Straight to a complete, valid submission. The delays that cost a programme are the avoidable ones, not the statutory clock.
A lead architect is involved from the first conversation to the last drawing. The team that starts your scheme stays with it, so nothing is passed down a chain.
Appraised properly, in the open, by someone who knows what a council needs to see and when the right answer is to push back.
Confines ListedEvery village here has confines drawn on an inset map, and the policy that opens them turns on a housing supply figure an inspector has just put below five years. That is the first thing to settle on a rural site, before anything is drawn.
exceptional design heritage re-use replacement open countrysideCosts staged behind certainty. Every commitment sits behind the decision that justifies it, so nothing is spent on a scheme that has not earned it.
appraisal consent your spendFrom first appraisal to final discharge, every survey, report and condition is tracked for you. You are not the one chasing an ecologist in week nine.
Ecology surveyReport inCondition 7tracked to dischargeTell us about it and a Senior Architect will give you an initial appraisal and guide you as to what to do next.
Start a conversationYes. Barby, Weedon and the villages around Daventry are places the practice has worked, from a Grade II farmstead consented twice in one week to a house extended for its new owner. Our applications sit on the registers of more than 100 planning authorities across the UK, so you get people who know this district backed by a national record.
Sometimes, and the plan says exactly when. Every village in the former Daventry district sits in a tier with confines drawn on an inset map, and policies RA1 to RA4 allow development outside that line only in listed circumstances. The first of them is where the housing land supply is less than five years. Meeting one of those circumstances is the gateway, not the whole test: the scale, services and character criteria still apply.
That is the live question here. The council's own housing land availability report put supply at 5.5 years at 1 April 2025. At an appeal for 700 homes at Brackley an inspector did not accept the figure and put deliverable supply nearer 4.6 years, and officers reported that to the planning policy committee on 22 April 2026. A new assessment with an April 2026 base date is under way, so check the position again before an application goes in.
Forty per cent in the rural areas of the former Daventry district and 25 per cent in Daventry town, subject to viability on a site by site basis. The trigger has moved: the adopted plan sets it at five dwellings, but the council's Infrastructure and Developer Contributions supplementary planning document, adopted in June 2026, sets the threshold for the former Daventry district at ten dwellings or more. So the percentage is settled and the trigger point has changed.
It depends where the site is and how many homes it holds. For 2026 the rate is £77.22 per square metre in Daventry town or on the sustainable urban extensions, £100.39 for a rural scheme above the affordable housing threshold, and £308.87 for a rural scheme below it. Rates are indexed every January. The banding turns on the affordable housing threshold, and that threshold has moved, so confirm which band applies before a village site is priced.
Yes, within limits that are written down. Policy RA6 supports the replacement of an existing building of the same general size, massing and bulk, predominantly on the same footprint, for the same use, where it respects the character of its rural surroundings. The same policy also supports the optimal viable use of a heritage asset, the re-use of redundant or disused buildings where that enhances the immediate setting, and individual dwellings of exceptional quality or innovative design.
The evidence does. There are twenty-six conservation areas in the former Daventry district, more than 1,500 listed buildings and more than 50 scheduled monuments, and policy ENV7 requires as a minimum that the Northamptonshire Historic Environment Record is consulted. Great weight is given to conservation whatever the level of harm, and any harm needs clear and convincing justification. Long straw thatch on a listed building is expected to be retained, repaired or reinstated.
Two adopted documents decide applications in the Daventry area today. The West Northamptonshire Joint Core Strategy, adopted on 15 December 2014, sets the strategy and the housing and affordable housing requirements. The Settlements and Countryside Local Plan for Daventry District 2011 to 2029, adopted on 20 February 2020, holds the detailed policies most schemes actually turn on, and it replaced every remaining saved policy of the 1997 local plan.
A single new West Northamptonshire Local Plan running to 2043 will replace both. Its Regulation 18 consultation ran from 29 January to 27 March 2026, the Regulation 19 version is due in the autumn, and the council intends to submit it for examination by the end of 2026. It carries limited weight until then, but a scheme likely to be determined after adoption should be tested against both.
Joint Core Strategy 2014 · Settlements and Countryside Local Plan 2020 · West Northamptonshire Local PlanThe rural area is everything outside Daventry town and the Northampton related development area, and the plan sorts it into four tiers. Primary service villages are Brixworth, Crick, Long Buckby, Moulton, Weedon and Woodford Halse. Secondary service villages include Badby, Barby, Braunston, Byfield, Flore, Kilsby, Naseby, Staverton, Welford, West Haddon and Yelvertoft. Below those sit other villages, then small settlements and hamlets. Each tier has confines drawn on an inset map, and development is expected to sit inside them.
Outside the confines, policies RA1 and RA2 allow development only where one of five circumstances applies: a housing land supply below five years, a clearly identified local need that cannot be met inside the confines, a scheme needed to support an essential local service such as a primary school or health service, economic development that maintains the village, or a proposal that accords with the employment policy. That is a gateway rather than a permission: the scale, services and character criteria apply inside and outside the line alike.
Settlements and Countryside Local Plan policies RA1 to RA4West Northamptonshire Council's own housing land availability report, published in June 2025, put deliverable supply at 5.5 years at 1 April 2025. At an appeal for 700 homes on the edge of Brackley the inspector did not accept that figure, challenged a number of the sites counted towards it, and put supply nearer 4.6 years. The council's head of planning policy reported the outcome to the planning policy committee on 22 April 2026, and a new assessment with an April 2026 base date is under way.
Two things follow, and the second is the one people miss. Below five years, the national presumption in favour of sustainable development tilts the planning balance towards housing. And separately, the district's own policies RA1 and RA2 make a supply below five years the first listed circumstance in which development outside a village's confines is acceptable at all. The number is restated every year, so it is worth re-checking at the point of application.
Housing Land Availability Report June 2025 · planning policy committee, 22 April 2026Policy RA6 recognises the intrinsic character, beauty and tranquillity of the open countryside and then lists the only forms of development it supports there. Four of the nine cover most of what actually gets built: the replacement of an existing building of the same general size, massing and bulk, predominantly on the same footprint and for the same use, where it respects its rural surroundings; the optimal viable use of a heritage asset; the re-use of redundant or disused buildings where that enhances the immediate setting; and individual dwellings of exceptional quality or innovative design.
The rest cover rural worker dwellings under policy HO6, extensions that respect the form and character of the building, essential infrastructure, agricultural, equestrian, forestry, leisure, community and tourism uses of an appropriate scale, and economic development that accords with the employment policies. Naming the right limb of RA6 at the outset, and designing to it, is worth more than any amount of argument later.
Settlements and Countryside Local Plan policy RA6The former Daventry district holds twenty-six conservation areas, and all but the Daventry Town, Daventry Reservoir and canal designations are centred on historic villages, so a rural site is more likely to be in or beside one than not. There are more than 1,500 listed buildings, more than 50 scheduled monuments and Naseby Battlefield, one of only 46 on Historic England's register. Local materials are ironstone and long straw thatch, and where thatch survives on a listed building the plan expects it to be retained, repaired or reinstated.
Policy ENV7 requires a proportionate understanding of significance and setting, and as a minimum that the Northamptonshire Historic Environment Record is consulted. Great weight is given to conservation whatever the level of harm, and any harm to a designated asset needs clear and convincing justification. East of the town, policy ENV8 protects the Borough Hill and Burnt Walls scheduled monuments and requires the openness of the marked heritage buffer to be retained in perpetuity, which is a stronger test than ordinary landscape protection.
Settlements and Countryside Local Plan policies ENV7 and ENV8Affordable housing is set by policy H2 of the joint core strategy: 40 per cent in the rural areas of the former Daventry district and 25 per cent in Daventry town, both subject to viability site by site. The trigger has moved. The adopted plan sets it at five dwellings, but the council's Infrastructure and Developer Contributions supplementary planning document, adopted in June 2026, sets the threshold for the former Daventry district at ten dwellings or more. Provision is expected on site.
The levy is where a village site gets expensive. For 2026 the Daventry rates are £77.22 per square metre in the town or on the sustainable urban extensions, £100.39 for a rural scheme above the affordable housing threshold, and £308.87 for a rural scheme below it, indexed every January. Note what the bands turn on: the charging schedule words them at five dwellings while the council's own levy page states the affordable threshold is currently ten. Confirm which band applies before a rural site is priced.
Joint Core Strategy policy H2 · Infrastructure and Developer Contributions SPD, June 2026 · West Northamptonshire CIL rates, 2026
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