Residential housing architects in the South West and beyond

As a practice, OCR Architecture has a proven track record in designing and obtaining planning permission for multi unit housing schemes in rural and urban areas. Our team have worked with a number of private and house builder clients to asses the viability of a site and develop this through to a successful planning application.

The team work with a group of well respected specialists to support our designs covering planning, landscape design, traffic and visual impact assessments to ensure that the submitted applications represent a robust scheme that provides the best chance of success for the applicant and de-risks the site moving forward. 

Our projects in North Devon have focused on rural locations, where plots of land on the edge of a village or a farm which has looked to diversify, so the team are used to developing a landscape-led approach that ensures that we are meeting the applicant's obligation to address bio diversity net gain, but also ensures that the schemes are designed to fit well in the local area.

The experience on the team covers public consultation events producing the imagery and organising the event to ensure that the local community can be engaged successfully at the early stages de-risking the site for the developer.

Our projects in Cornwall have in most instances been outline applications to help add value to the site prior to the applicant selling the sites on to more established house builders so we are experienced in developing master plans that are suited both for planning and to ensure that the land and planning permission is attractive to developers and not signing them to onerous ongoing conditions that can de-value the plot. 

Our schemes in Somerset, Dorset and the Derbyshire Dales continue to show that whilst we have an established team and clear process we don’t believe in a one size fits all solution and we ensure that the best scheme is always developed to suit the client's aspirations whilst ensuring that we are developing a scheme that can be supported through the local planning process. 

The current lack of 5 year housing land supply in North Devon and Torridge amongst many other councils is providing an opportunity to asses plots that have not previously been included in the local plan and to put forward the sites on their merits.

The team as well as having an extensive proven track record of housing schemes have also worked on a number of high profile mixed use schemes throughout the UK so can offer advice on possible mixed use solutions to help unlock sites that housing alone may not prove to be developable. 

As well as the early phases of viability and planning the team also work with developers on site to oversee the build process providing inspections and  architectural certificates. Our experienced technicians are well versed working with LABC and NHBC and understand how to design and detail housing to ensure that compliance is achieved on site. 

We also understand the issue of financing large developments so are able to structure our fees to help reduce costs at the early stages of a project. 

We have worked on projects from 2 units in a garden through to 50 + units so can bring our experience to every type of housing development, rural or urban.