Solihull | architects
Solihull keeps winning best-place-to-live awards. Someone still has to design the houses that earn it.
Maybe it's a Dorridge extension that needs to sit quietly beside a house with real age on it. Maybe it's a plot near Dickens Heath where the street doesn't need another box that looks like the one next door. Either way, you've been picturing it for a while and the broad shape is already in your head. Turning that into something Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council will sign off is the harder half, and that's the half we take on.
local proof
From beamed cottages in Knowle to new streets off the M42
Two ends of the same borough, two completely different design briefs.
Knowle's high street still runs on Tudor beams and hanging baskets. Ten minutes away, Dickens Heath was built around a reservoir with the ink barely dry on the masterplan. Both count as Solihull. Neither wants the same house.
Solihull answers to Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council across the board, but the conversation shifts by postcode. In Knowle and Dorridge, and along parts of Hampton in Arden, conservation status and mature streets set the tone. Closer to Dickens Heath and the newer estates off the M42, the council is asking a different set of questions altogether — more about density and how a new street reads as a whole. Whether you're extending a family home or bringing forward a small development, knowing which conversation you're in matters more than any generic planning advice.
With the HS2 interchange landing near the NEC and Birmingham Airport, and the M42 corridor pulling in businesses that once sat in Birmingham proper, Solihull is seeing more small-scale development interest than it has in years: extra units on a garden plot, a semi split into two, a tired bungalow replaced with something that earns its keep on the site it's sitting on.
the part everybody dreads
Solihull's planning conversations aren't all the same
Most refusals here aren't about whether an idea is any good. They're about a plan that didn't answer a question Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council was always going to ask — whether that's a neighbour's outlook, a tree someone forgot was protected, or a design that reads as too big for its plot. Get the answer into the drawings from the outset and most of that risk disappears before the application is even in.
Validation is the delay nobody warns you about. An incomplete application sits untouched for a stretch before it reaches anyone's desk, which is a frustrating way to lose a month on a project that hasn't even been assessed yet. Your application goes in complete, so nothing sits waiting on a technicality that could have been caught before it was ever submitted.
We work alongside homeowners, landlords and small developers, and we bring the same rigour to a five-unit scheme as we do to somebody's kitchen extension. Wherever your plot sits, tell us the postcode and we'll tell you what Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is likely to make of it, before you've spent anything on drawings.
architectural services in Solihull
Four ways in, one place to start.
House Extensions
Ground floor additions in every shape a Solihull plot allows, designed to add space without making the house look like it's wearing something borrowed.
New Build & Replacement Homes
New homes on single plots, or a tired house ready to come down and start again, drawn to answer your plot and your street rather than lifted from a catalogue.
Remodels & Interior Reconfiguration
Plenty of Solihull's best houses have good bones and a dated layout. We open them up and make the space earn its keep for how you live now.
Small Sites & Landlord Schemes
HMOs, small infill sites and conversions for landlords and developers who want their numbers and their design taken equally seriously.
what to expect
What happens once you get in touch.
Free consultation
It starts with a conversation, at the property or over a call. What you've got, what it needs to become, and what you're working with.
Design & feasibility
Ideas tested on the page and against the policy, then a direction you sign off before there's a full drawing set to pay for.
Planning submission
Application drawn, submitted and managed. When the case officer comes back with questions, we're the ones who field them.
Building Regulations
Everything the build needs on paper: construction details, specs and schedules, drawn up so your contractor and the inspector aren't left guessing.
Site support
There's no vanishing act at approval. Through the build, you've got a direct line for the questions that only surface once the work starts.
Got a Solihull project taking shape in your head?
A free, no-obligation conversation with the studio, not a switchboard. Nothing gets decided until you're ready.
FAQ's
