Planning By Design Reviews 

Great company. Fast, efficient, professional service. I would most definitely recommend.

Brilliant service again by the team, always helpful and kept informed at every stage of the process.

Mark Read of Planning By Design has been amazing from the word go. We are at the first stages of having an extension built at the side of our house, and Mark has explained the procedure in full detail. At first, I was confused by several aspects of the process, but every question, no matter how minor, has been attended to so far. I have full confidence that Planning By Design has been the right choice to make to satisfy all the requirements related to planning appraisal, building regulations, and structural engineering calculations. The company has already provided positive advice on the feasibility of the project, for which I am grateful.

Planning by Design Ltd has been my choice to deal with my dropped kerb application and they have been great, with a good price and speed.

This was my fist time putting a planning permission application in for a commercial property and ‘Planning by Design’ helped me through the whole process, this helped me a lot and made the whole process a lot less stressful! Would highly recommend them!

Planning by Design were amazing through the whole
Process of applying for a change of use. As first time business owners the amount of information and support we received helped immensely with reducing any stress related to the application. They were fast, efficient and very friendly. I would definitely recommend Planning by Design to any and everybody that is in need of help with a planning application!

The Pre planning service is a waste of time. The service says they will provide a definite report after engaging and research done by the planner, however the research provided was very basic and was told to walk the street to gauge other hmos. We made clear to planner to stop the consultation call as that was general information. Wasted our money and zero value for money.

I received a professional service and got the planning permission I was seeking.

PLEASE SAVE YOUR HARD-EARNED MONEY - STAY AWAY!
I wanted to look at what potential my field would have of gaining planning and found this company online.
From the first look of the website, it looked perfect, so I made contact and paid for a feasibility study.
This all looked positive and was advised to maybe look at a mixed development.
To put this work together cost my just short of 5k (this also included a 1 hr virtual appointment with the local planning which I was informed was the best way to see how the meeting was going and to redirect if they felt, so at least we can get something on the land) Which is fine as I thought this was a good company with lots of experience.
I got calls and emails going through the plans and was very happy. Then the plans went in and I had to pay over 1k to the council for the pre application.
This is where things started to go wrong!
The council came back and stated basically they don't look favourably on anything on this land "Planning by Design (PBD)" stated I had a medium to good chance to get something on the land)
I tried then to call PBD to talk to them about the next stages, KNOWBODY would pick up the phone or give me a call! eventually I got emails stating maybe to accept a £250 refund off the council.
I phoned and emailed at least 5 times if someone could give me a call
All I received back was emails stating they don’t have time to call me!
I asked to be put through to the director "Grant Singlehurst-Ward" From the very first email Grant was rude! Again, I asked Grant for a 5 min call, again an email back after chasing saying no calls!
But he did say give me more money and we can look at what they could do. At this point I knew this company doesn’t care once they have taken your money.
All I got back was read your T's &C's and they have done what I had paid for.
I informed Grant that I paid £300 for the virtual meeting and this was not carried out. I simply asked for this £300 to be paid back and we could go our separate ways. Again, after several emails Grant stated I was not getting anything back!
I went to this company as I had no idea of the process and wanted someone to work with to guide me through the process and help me understand the steps.
If the feasibility came back as Low risk, I would not have paid the extra 5K. In my opinion I was led a bit of a dream.
This latter part of the process as placed me under a lot of stress, and I wanted to put something in writing to try and help people in the same situation as myself not to fall for the dream and to be made aware this company led by Grant don't care about you as a person or willing to actually pick up a phone.
Even when you have said this process is making you feels ill!
PBD are all about taking your money. BE VERY CAREFULL and look somewhere else.
I will now be taking court proceedings to try and get at least some of my money back.
On saying the above I do feel that some of the team are good and decent people but unfortunately not led by people with the same morals!

Our first application with another architect was unfortunately rejected, so we decided to work with this company for our second attempt. They guided us through every step with professionalism and care, making a stressful process much easier. Thanks to them, our outbuilding application was finally approved. We highly recommend their services!

Pleasure to deal with Planning by design. Kim was always there to take your call & answer your questons
I highly recommend

I saw a few comments that were negative on here before using Planning by Design, so i did wonder. Honestly the experience has been outstanding from start to finish on my designs and application. Kim and Mislav were really helpful. I was able to ask all my questions get complete clarity on everything. I’m new to this so had a lot of questions. Nothing ever felt too much trouble. No question was treated as a silly question. Everything got approved by the council too. Such a smooth and easy process thank you so much! I guess the biggest compliment I can pay them is that we are using them again for further work. Would recommend.

Helpful, professional, and responsive throughout. The team clearly explained the planning constraints and provided a detailed, site-specific appraisal. When circumstances changed, they were helpful and adaptable where possible and communicated transparently. I would recommend Planning By Design and would use them again.

I found out them over the Internet and used them for my retrospective planning application for rear garden fence height. My fence was raised from little over 1 meter high to 2.4m high from the rear garden floor level. it thus exceeded the permitted development rules and i received a letter from council as someone complained to them about it. I decided to make an application to keep the fence. Having enquired from multiple Companies, this was the only one who gave me hope as they did my planning appraisal first and my town planner Aaron Basi told me that my project will likely succeed due to the circumstances of my property, my reasons to raise the height, and the natural slope that exists in my garden and street etc and all this can be explained to the council easily to get the permission. Aaron Basi seemed very nice over the phone and gave me lot of confidence and hope that he will explain all these points to the council properly in his planning statement as well as in follow up communication and will likely get me the permission. So, I decided to go ahead with them. They sent me the invoice to pay in full so they can draft my planning statement and start working on the planning application. I paid the invoice by bank transfer so they can immediately start the work and waving off my 14 days cancellation. They asked me for photographs and I sent them nearly 100 pictures and videos of my rear garden before and after the fence height was raised. They did the planning statement and prepared the application and made the drawings and we filed the application with high hopes. The council officer came for site visit and sent his first response afterwards. He mistakenly assumed that alongside raising the fence height, we had built up a new patio without permission. That patio was already built up in the property when I purchased it. Aaron Basi instead of explaining this to the council and pointing out the officer's misunderstanding, he instead tried to blame it on me and said that he was not aware that I had also built a Patio. He could clearly see as I had sent them more than 100 pictures & videos and he seemed to have not paid any attention to my provided information and evidence. He was such an incompetent person that I felt left alone on this matter. I had to craft the response myself so he could send back to the Council officer and explain that this patio was pre-existing. I again had to send lots of pictures & PDFs as evidence. The council officer eventually agreed by seeing my previous pictures and left the patio matter. However, the officer gave his mind over the fence height and said he will refuse the application and asked us to reduce the height of the fence to 2.0m which is equal to permitted development rules. This Town planner instead of doing his real job at that time and explaining the situation to the officer like he said to me at the stage of appraisal, left it all on me and started preparing me to accept and do the compromise. Aaron did not do anything further or added any value and started behaving like a postman; passing officer's emails to me to take my opinion on it and my own crafted response so he could send it back. He was engaged on this to work proactively, add value, give suggestions and do it all for me. Instead he behaved exactly like a postman delivering letters between two parties. I felt extremly helpless in this all situation. I repented all the time having hired them & paying them for my application. I had to do all the research and find material and words to respond to the council officer all the time in order to salvage the situation. This extremely incompetent town planner literally added no value in it. I felted trapped in this situation. After trying my best and even sending direct replies to the council officer as Aaron was not offering any help, I had to compromise and agreed to council officer. New revised designs were prepared for 2.0m height and council approved the application. The decision came and council gave the conditional approval to my application to being down the fence to 2.0m of height. It essentially means that if my builder had raised the fence to 2.0m instead of 2.4m, it would have been fine due to permitted rules and i would not even have to do any application and incur £1600 charges for this company plus £347 council fee. My nearly £2k is wasted, alongside months of time, endless anxiety feeling helpless with them. Their business model is like this, they do planning appraisal, hype up customers and give them hopes, even when I had told Aaron that other companies have told me that my applicant will not pass. Even at urgent times, The contact is only through emails, despite aaron assured me in his appraisal call that he would be available for calls. They charge for every phone call. I wanted to write more but due to limit i have end it.

Planning by Design dealt with my planning application in a friendly and professional way. They responded helpfully and quickly to any queries. Although the outcome wasn’t very promising initially, in the end the application was approved unconditionally. A great result. My thanks to Mislav and his colleagues at Planning by Design.

Excellent all round service where we were kept fully informed throughout the process.
Our application for a loft conversion and rear extension was initially deemed invalid by our council. Once Planning by Design took over the process on our behalf they produced excellent professional drawings and a comprehensive Design and Access statement that helped us acquire planning permission within the required timescales.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend their services.

We had to apply for planning permission for alterations as we lived in a conservation area. Planning by design helped us through the whole process and made it easy and stress-free, and we were approved today. Their work was outstanding, thorough, and they communicated well throughout the whole process. I highly recommend them!

Planning By Design (PBD) were able to help me decide whether or not to proceed with a planning application to convert my existing office space into a residential flat.
Rather than pay a surveyor £2000 plus vat, which he had quoted for a pre-application advice meeting with the local authority, I was able to pay only a mere £120 to PBD to find out that my application was highly unlikely to be successful !
I thoroughly recommend them.

Great service from start to finish, excellent attention to detail and communication.

I used planning for design and found their service to be of a very high standard. Helped us get permission for a children's home.
Would definitely recommend