Building your dream home is something that we all aspire to and our trusted team of planning experts can guide you through the complexities of the planning process to a successful outcome.
Location is “everything” when choosing the position to design and build your new dream home and we at Avalon take the time to fully absorb your dreams and aspirations when working alongside a team of architects, ecologists and landscape architects to achieve planning permission.
We have the knowledge and experience of working in sensitive and complex locations such as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), Conservation Areas, Heritage Coastlines, Registered Parks & Gardens, Listed buildings, National Parks and the Green Belt.
Having delivered a number of unique homes across the country, we can work with you from the initial ideas stage to foresee any potential planning hurdles or constraints and find creative solutions to overcome them in a timely and efficient manner.
We look forward to working with you to achieve your dream home!
Let us help take your project to the next stage
- Remember, not all planning consultants are equal! Your ideal planning adviser should have good experience of projects similar to yours and should understand your vision.
- Bringing a planning adviser on-board early in the design process will always save you time and money in the long run.
- Your Team – You probably already have an architect in mind, but there’s lots of other specialist information you may also need to get your planning application past Council scrutiny. We’re able to confidently identify which specialist you will and won’t need to support your planning application and can also help co-ordinate project briefs and professionally critique reports to make sure your application is robust from the outset.
- Budgets and Timescales – Our fees are fixed and our scope of works clearly laid out from the start, so there’s no need to worry about unexpected costs when budgeting for your planning application.
- Communication – We’re lucky to be able to help realise our amazing clients’ visions for a dream home, and we know that this can be an emotional as well as an exciting time. We therefore make sure to keep you up to date as often as we can with progress on your application, and we don’t limit access to our senior consultants and Directors as soon as the ink is dry on our instruction like some national consultancies do. We pride ourselves on our excellent customer service and we know it makes all the difference when we’re working towards such a major milestone for our clients, and we hope you will appreciate our hands-on approach too!
- Pre-Application, Help or Hindrance? Whilst pre-application can sometimes feel like an inconvenient hurdle, we often find it incredibly helpful to engage with Council Officers, or key heritage and environmental advisors ahead of submitting your formal planning application. We will always be happy to run through the pros and cons of pre-application with you, for your unique project, but if handled correctly it can pay huge dividends for securing planning certainty as early as possible.
- Listed Dwellings and Houses in Conservation Areas – With combined planning, heritage and archaeology specialists in a single team, we’re able to provide all the planning expertise you will need to secure permission for your private home development, no matter how highly restrictive your heritage designation may seem. We have years of successfully securing Consents for innovative listed building alerations and extensions, ranging from work on Cathedrals and National trust houses, through to Grade I and II* houses. So we’re always confident supporting homeowners who want to push highly creative and innovative designs, and you can expect us to provide pragmatic and experienced heritage advice.
- Para 80 (Unique and Exceptional) Houses – Working in the South and Southwest, we’re no strangers to securing permission for homes in spectacular locations. So, if your dream new home is in an isolated countryside location, you may already be looking to secure planning permission on the basis of designing a ‘Paragraph 80’ House, ie. a house with an exceptional quality design that reflects the highest standard of architecture. You may be wondering if simply instructing a great architect is sufficient to get permission and, though we’re definitely not going argue that an outstanding designer will do wonders, we also strongly recommend looking at appointing a great planning specialist too, as securing permission for exceptional houses in the countryside will often require robust advocacy on factors such as sustainability, landscape, views, ecology, housing need and rural economy too.
- Sustainability – With Climate Emergencies now declared by most Councils, demonstrating exemplary sustainability credentials is fast becoming a key priority for planning applications, whether you’re planning to build your new dream home or remodel a romantic historic building. Avalon is at the forefront of innovations in arguing the policy value of renewable technologies, retrofitting and embedded carbon with Councils, and we particularly welcome the opportunity to work on exemplar projects in the South and Southwest that seek to push the boundaries of sustainability innovation.
Here to help
If you have a project that would benefit from expert advice, we’d love to hear from you.
Murray Ross
Planning Director
