Architecture for the way you live

Yes, and that is how most of our projects run. We start with your brief and a measured survey, work up the design with you, take it through planning and building regulations, prepare the drawings a builder can price from, help you choose a contractor, then administer the contract and inspect the work on site until the house is handed back to you. It follows the RIBA Plan of Work, stages 0 to 7, so at every step you know what has been done, what it is costing and what happens next. You are equally welcome to appoint us for one part of it.

Preparing the tender package and putting it out to builders, going through the returned prices with you, advising on who to appoint and on which form of building contract. Once work starts we act as contract administrator: regular site inspections, written instructions, valuing the work for interim payments, pricing variations as they come up, and keeping the programme and the budget under review. At the end we inspect the work, list anything still outstanding and see it put right before the final certificate is issued.

Yes. New houses are a large part of the practice, from replacement dwellings and houses on infill plots to one off homes on private estates. A new build is planned differently from an extension. The plot, its access, drainage, trees and ecology, and the local policy that applies to that specific site all decide what can realistically be built, so we test all of it early rather than after a design has been drawn.

Yes. A good deal of our work sits on private estates, where the estate or residents' association has its own design rules and its own approval process running alongside the council's. That is a second consent to win, often with covenants on materials, height, tree cover and boundary treatment. We prepare the estate submission alongside the planning application so the two are not fighting each other.

A householder application is normally determined in around eight weeks from the date the council validates it. Larger schemes, listed buildings and other complex applications usually take longer, and the timescale can extend if the council asks for further information. No practice can guarantee a decision or its outcome, so we put the time into preparing a submission properly.

Our studio is in Headley, near Epsom, and we work throughout Surrey and the Surrey Hills, including Cobham, Esher, Oxshott, Weybridge, Dorking, Guildford, Virginia Water, Wentworth and Kingswood. We also take on projects in London, the Cotswolds and elsewhere in the UK, and beyond that for the right project.