Rural Design & Build Specialists
We help landowners turn an idea into a finished building. We work out what your land can hold, draw it, get it permitted and build it, bringing in specialists where they’re needed. Fourteen years of doing just that, on our own land and other people’s.
You know your land better than anyone. We can bring fresh eyes, the planning know-how and the experience of building it. We’ll walk it with you and look at what else it could do, from a holiday let in an old barn to a workshop, an annexe or an events space. You decide what fits.
Where do I start?
Every rural building starts with the same question: “Can I put something here?” The answer sits in a tangle of rules: permitted development, prior approvals, change of use, National Landscape policy, the legal definition of a mobile home and Building Regulations.
The usual advice is to hire an architect, a planning consultant and a structural engineer, then find a builder. They’re skilled people who do a great job, and we’re glad to work alongside them. But most rural buildings don’t need that level of expertise at every stage. What you need is someone who knows the rules, draws the building properly and knows when a specialist’s help is really worth having.
We’re the company we always needed. We’re not architects, chartered planners or structural engineers. We do most of the work ourselves and bring those specialists in for the parts where their expertise really counts, like the structural calculations Building Control signs off. You get the right expertise at the right stage, without paying for more than your project needs.
New buildings in old, forgotten corners.
Tired yards, sagging sheds and worked-out ground are where rural land has the most to give. A well-made, properly permitted building brings them back to life, and that’s where it adds the most value.
Buildings that earn their place on the land.
Four kinds of rural building, each one something we've taken through the consents and built ourselves.
Redeveloping farm buildings
Giving redundant barns and farm buildings a new use: workshops, farm shops, offices, holiday lets or event space.
Annexes, cabins & garden offices
Space for family, for work, or to let, set into a garden or paddock.
Holiday units
Cabins, lodges and glamping units that turn a field into an income.
Event & hospitality spaces
Barns, bars and covered spaces for venues, pubs and farms, approved for public use.
The part most people get stuck on.
Whether a rural building is allowed depends on a tangle of rules. We know them because we've used every one of them on real buildings.
More on permissions-
01
FeasibilityA site visit and a written answer: what's possible, which route it takes, and a realistic cost.
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02
Farm diversificationWhich buildings and new uses make sense for your holding, and the consent route for each.
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03
Planning advice & applicationsPrior approvals, change of use and full planning, including in the Cotswolds National Landscape.
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04
Mobile home legislationBuildings designed within the legal definition of a mobile home, which need consent for siting and use but not Building Regulations.
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05
Building ControlFull plans applications, a structural engineer where needed, and inspections through to the completion certificate.
A home, annexe or holiday unit, without Building Regulations.
A building made within the legal definition of a mobile home still needs consent for where it sits and how it's used, but it sits outside the Building Regulations. Done properly, it can be the quicker and more affordable route.
We built our own four-bedroom, two-bathroom family home this way, to the full size the definition allows.
See the home
How it works
Use us for the whole journey, or just the stages you need. Every stage after the visit is a fixed fee, agreed in writing.
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01AskTell us what you have in mind and where.
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02VisitWe walk the site and send a written answer on what it can hold.
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03PermitDrawings and the right application, handled for you.
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04BuildWe build it, or oversee trusted trades you contract directly.
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05Sign offCompletion certificate in hand, ready to use or let.
An events barn for 220 guests, permitted and built in eight months.
Full planning, then a full plans Building Regulations approval for public use: accessible toilets, a commercial kitchen with extraction and an energy calculation.
See all projectsFind out what your land can hold.
Up to 90 minutes on site with you, then a two-page note: which consent route applies, what the council will look for, and a realistic budget range.
Landowners who build.
We're based at Veizey's Quarry near Tetbury, where we farm, grow trees, run our own sawmill and work a former limestone quarry. We know what a building has to do on rural land because we need our own to do it.
Pete Heathcock has spent 14 years designing rural buildings, taking them through planning and Building Control, and building them, including his own family home. We work with a structural engineer on the calculations Building Control needs, and with an independent planning consultant when a scheme needs that extra expertise.
Where it suits the building, we clad it in cedar from our own plantation, milled on site.
