Designing A Site For New Homes

Masterplanners and Urban Designers are often faced with a plethora of environmental and technical ‘constraints’ on potential development sites.

While many constraints are relatively easy to resolve, some features can have significant development capacity implications if not appropriately or innovatively challenged. This is a particular challenge for features which have further levels of protection set by the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).

At Catesby Estates, our highly experienced technical, urban design and communication teams work collaboratively with chosen specialists to turn what may initially appear as significant development limitation into real and positive opportunities. Our approach enables us to:

  • Fully maximise the development potential of each of our sites for our landowners
  • Gain positive engagement and support from the relevant statutory stakeholders
  • Ultimately deliver high quality outline planning permissions, which are appealing to both national and local housebuilders, as they can be confident they have been fully considered from a technical and deliverability perspective

Designing for good residential development

Not all land site constraints are equal.  Constraint infers limitation, or does it when it comes to development?

As an example, Catesby Estates has worked on a site where the potential for uncovered archaeology was a potential constraint. During our early dialogue with the relevant statutory stakeholders, we were consistently receiving strong resistance and objection to the principle of development. 

Recognising the importance of resolving this limitation and gaining support from the stakeholders, Catesby committed to early, archaeological analysis followed by extensive trial trenching. This enabled us to reopen more positive dialogue with stakeholders as well as making meaningful connections with local interest groups.

This approach has provided stakeholders with early comfort that the areas of significant archaeology were limited, and therefore the site was not as archaeologically constrained as first thought. As such, we have been able to work constructively together exploring how archaeological features of greater importance could inform and influence the form and layout of the development as well as the position and treatment of the public open spaces.

This has also enabled us to propose features within the public open spaces which ‘reveal’ the archaeological and historic importance of the whole settlement to both existing and future residents.

The result has been the achievement of a more extensive developable area than first considered possible; a range of locally desirable benefits; and an ability to fully demonstrate how our design rationale complies with the specific and challenging historic and landscape stipulations of the NPPF.

We believe the key to our success rate is our collaborative approach and commitment to delivering sensitively designed housing developments tailored to the character of the local area and providing real community benefits.

As a result, our landowners are justifiably proud of the quality of the places that they leave for future generations.

Thinking about land promotion for your land site?

We’re actively seeking strategic land sites to add to our land promotion portfolio.

With a proven track record and strong success rate, landowners across the country are encouraged to contact us to find out how we could help you maximise the value of your land.

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