Walsingham Planning

We provide commercial, professional and practical town planning advice with a personal touch from local offices with national reach. We treat our clients’ property development ambitions as if they were our own.

We aim to offer an innovative, commercial approach to planning consultancy and be known for our professional expertise, practical advice, commercial insight and success.

We are experts in our field: we will use our professional expertise to provide accurate, useful and pragmatic guidance, in full accord with RTPI Professional standards.

We are commercially astute: we seek to add value to our client’s development aspirations by delivering expedient and positive planning outcomes;

We are well prepared: we identify and deal with issues professionally, and as early as possible.

We value people: we invest significantly in training and support to our employees.

We’re a town planning consultancy with a long track record of helping commercial and public sector clients and landowners successfully navigate through the planning process for their property development projects. We have 3 offices in Bristol, Buckinghamshire and Cheshire, we operate across the whole of mainland UK.

We have a wealth of experience helping clients in the following sectors:

Residential
Retail
Commercial
Health
Education
Heritage
Hotels
Leisure & sports
Mixed use
Motor trade
Pub & restaurants
Coffee Shops
Our Services

At Walsingham Planning we offer a full range of town planning services. In addition to the usual range of offerings, such as support with planning applications and appeals, we provide more specialised options, such as site promotion through the Local Plan process and planning for Listed Buildings.

We’re also glad to give our expert opinion on whether a proposal is worth pursuing, with our development appraisal service, and to help you identify development opportunities through an estate review.

Site Promotion
We are able to act for landowners or prospective purchasers promoting the development prospects of land through the Development Plan process. We have many successful examples of where we have secured an allocation for development and we have then gone on to make the necessary applications to secure the planning permission.

Development and Acquisition appraisal
We have experience in helping clients achieve planning consent for all sorts of developments, from building an individual house on a parcel of land or altering a Listed Building to creating a large-scale holiday resort or redeveloping in a town centre.

Planning applications
Over the years we have submitted hundreds of planning applications for a wide variety of different proposals across the UK. In 2017 alone we submitted 330 applications to 143 different Councils with 94.5% success rate for developments ranging from extensions to single houses through to major commercial developments.

Design and Access statements
Design and Access statements are documents that show that a development has been designed with sensitivity to the specific site and the local environment in general and with accessibility for all in mind, including people with disabilities, older people and young children. We regularly prepare these to accompany our applications or we may work with project architects to ensure that a scheme is as well supported as possible.

Listed building and archaeology support
We have experience of dealing with many listed buildings, grades I, II and II*, throughout mainland UK, as well as ancient monuments.

Heritage Impact Assessments
We can prepare the Heritage Impact Assessments needed to accompany most planning applications for development which may have an impact on the historic environment. In more complex cases we will work alongside building historians and specialist consultants to ensure the scheme is portrayed in the best possible manner.

Retail assessments
Under the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), anyone applying for planning permission for a retail development must carry out certain due diligence work. We can help by preparing a retail assessment to accompany your planning application.

Planning for advertisements
Many signs and advertisements need approval from the local planning authority, known as Advertisement Consent. However, a wide range of options are allowable under the Regulations without specific approval. We can advise on your options and make the necessary applications.

Planning appeals
No-one relishes the prospect of fighting an appeal. When any client comes to us for assistance with a planning application, we apply the ‘could we win this at appeal?’ test from the very outset. If the answer is no, we’ll try to identify an alternative solution that avoids the thorny issues while satisfying their requirements. If it becomes necessary to fight an appeal we have experience with all 3 appeal methods to present the strongest possible case.
Contesting enforcement

We have extensive experience of dealing with enforcement matters, including persuading local authorities that their proposed actions are misguided and should be withdrawn, negotiating solutions and fighting appeals.