Insights

That runs across the RIBA stages: feasibility and brief, concept and detailed design, planning, Building Regulations, tendering and administering the contract on site.

Architect is a title protected by law, so check the register first. Have the site address, what you want to achieve and a realistic budget ready before the first conversation.

We quote a fee for a defined scope, agreed in writing before any work begins, on a basis set per job. Fees are staged, so you only ever commit to the next decision point.

Those are statutory floors, counted from the day the application is complete rather than the day you submit it. Extensions of time are routine, and the date that matters is the decision notice, not the committee.

ARB registration is the legal baseline needed to use the title. RIBA Chartered sits above it as a recognised quality mark, and both are worth checking before you appoint anyone.

What removes that right is the house itself: a flat, a listed building, a conservation area, an earlier extension that used the allowance up, or a condition on the original permission. Where the right survives, the limits are dimensional and exact.

Four things remove that right: breaking the plane of the roof slope that fronts a highway, exceeding the 40 or 50 cubic metre allowance, sitting on protected land, or being a flat. Building Regulations apply either way.

Both limits are measured above ground level, and from the higher side where the ground differs. A listed building removes the right altogether, whatever the height.

Householder rights attach to a house that already exists, and a replacement is a new one. What decides most cases is size against the original building, and what could lawfully be built on the plot without asking anyone.

Designation withdraws some permitted development rights, brings demolition and trees under control, and places a statutory duty on the council. On an unlisted building it says nothing at all about the inside.

It is the main route for a redundant barn. Prior approval is not automatic: the building has to be structurally sound, its agricultural use documented, and the works must stay within what Class Q allows.

The route depends on openness, the site's planning history and what already stands there. Replacement dwellings are the most reliable path, and one we have taken through to consent.

Paragraph 84 sets the bar at exceptional design quality, tested through design review. We design and pursue these, and say early whether a site can carry the argument.

Sometimes a revised application is the faster route. We read the refusal, give a straight view on which way to go, and the record includes schemes won at appeal.

It is separate from planning permission and often runs alongside it. Listing covers the interior, anything attached, and separate structures standing before July 1948. Doing the work without consent is a criminal offence.

A non-material amendment handles the small stuff. Section 73 varies a condition and creates a new permission with its own clock. Anything that changes the description of development needs a fresh application.

Those rights can be removed by an Article 4 direction, a planning condition or listed status. Building Regulations nearly always apply even where planning permission does not.

A council has eight weeks to decide a discharge application, and a fee is payable per request. Where a condition cannot be met as drafted, the route is not to ignore it but to vary it.

Since September 2020 shops, offices, cafes, gyms, clinics and nurseries have all sat in one class, so moving between them needs nothing. Uses outside the classes have no such freedom and need a full application every time.

Where express consent is needed, a council may judge it on two things only: amenity and public safety. It cannot condition what the sign says. Displaying one without consent is a criminal offence rather than a breach.

A refusal on principle is a different problem from a refusal on details, and it needs a different fix. Knowing which one you are holding is the first question worth answering.

A site can look developable and still carry a constraint that removes most of its value. Those checks are quick, set against what they save.

Answering it takes a look at the local plan position and at the site itself. We give you that read before anyone spends money on it.

The count that survives is almost always smaller than the one that fits on the drawing. Testing what erodes it before the massing is fixed is what protects the number you took to the land deal.

It is secured and maintained for at least 30 years under the Environment Act 2021. We factor it into feasibility at the start, so a scheme is priced for it rather than caught out by it.

The first roost assessment can be done any month of the year. The emergence surveys that follow it run May to August, and Natural England normally expects two, so a missed window can cost a season.

A site in zone 2 or 3 needs its own flood risk assessment, a sequential test, and sometimes an exception test on top. Drainage is settled later by condition, and that is the half that delays a start.

Councils want genuine marketing evidence over a set period and an independent viability appraisal. The tests come from the local plan and the council's own validation checklist.

Contamination, services crossing the site, levels and the cost of clearing what stands are what decide whether a consented brownfield scheme is deliverable, and they are usually found after the consent rather than before it.

An outline permission does less than people assume: parameter plans bind you, and conditions on the outline can constrain the reserved matters. Two clocks then run, three years to apply and two from approval to begin.

A pub is sui generis, so every change of use needs an application. An asset of community value listing does less than owners fear, but councils expect real marketing evidence before they accept a pub is finished.