Tamworth | architects
Tamworth doesn’t have room to waste, and neither should your drawings. It’s one of the most tightly bounded boroughs in the Midlands: built up, unparished, and short enough on land that the council is reviewing its own Green Belt to find more. You’ve already got a plot, a house or a small site in mind, and a rough shape of what you’d like from it. We turn that into something the council will sign off, and make sure it earns every inch it’s been given.
local proof
Tamworth doesn’t hand you a blank canvas. Most of the borough is built up already, plots are modest, and the sites that come up for an extension, an infill home or a small development rarely have room to be generous. That’s not a constraint we design around, it’s the actual brief: get the massing right, protect a neighbour’s light, and make a tight footprint read as more house than it is. It works whether you’re adding a kitchen extension for your own family or squeezing genuine value out of a development site for someone else’s.
Tamworth Borough Council administers one of the more tightly bounded planning authorities in the Midlands: ten wards, no civil parish anywhere in the borough, and a Local Plan currently under review specifically because there’s so little land left to allocate, including an active Green Belt review as part of the emerging 2022–2043 plan. One thing worth knowing before you start: not everything with a Tamworth postcode answers to Tamworth Borough Council. Fazeley, right on the town’s own doorstep, is decided by Lichfield District Council, the same authority behind our Lichfield studio. Tell us the address and we’ll confirm exactly which authority you’re dealing with, before you spend a penny on drawings.
the part everybody dreads
Ask anyone who’s had an extension refused round here and the reason is rarely the design itself. It’s the neighbour three feet away. Plots in Tamworth sit close together and gardens are modest, so a scheme that would sail through somewhere with more breathing room can trip over lost light, overlooking, or looking too big for the plot it’s sitting on.
That’s on the drawing board from the first sketch: where windows sit, how the massing steps down, and how the new work reads from the neighbour’s kitchen window, not only from the street. It’s less exciting than arguing heritage policy, but in a borough this compact, it’s the argument that decides most applications, and the case officer has usually walked your street before.

architectural services in Tamworth
More room without losing the garden. Extensions designed to fit a compact plot and still win over the neighbours, with Tamworth Borough Council’s side of it carried for you.
A single plot, or a gap nobody else could make work. New homes designed for sites where land is tight and every elevation has to earn its place.
Tamworth needs more homes than it has land for. We design co-living and HMO schemes that make that arithmetic work, for owners playing the long game rather than the quick flip.
Renders that show exactly what’s proposed, long before anyone reaches for a trowel. Handy for getting a planning committee, or your own family, agreeing on the same picture.
what to expect
We walk the plot with you, face to face or over video, and give you a straight read on what a site this size can genuinely take.
Options tested against the boundary, the neighbours and the council, so you’re not choosing blind before the formal drawings start.
We assemble the application, submit it to whichever council has jurisdiction, Tamworth Borough or otherwise, and take on the case officer’s follow-up questions.
The technical drawings, specs and schedules your builder and the inspector both need, done properly so nothing stalls once work starts.
We don’t disappear once digging starts. A phone call, a site visit, or a fast answer when your builder runs into something the drawings didn’t quite cover.
Bats can hold up homes, commercial sites and listed buildings for most of a year. Survey triggers, council rules, permitted development, licences and costs.
A new Allestree appointment prompts a practical guide to refurbishing or replacing a house, with a worked cost example, surveys, fees and planning questions.
JSA is appointed to design a sensitive extension to a Grade II listed stone building in Amber Valley, Derbyshire, going to pre-application with CGI support.
Poor architectural drawings create assumptions, delays and cost. See why clear, accurate information matters to homeowners and commercial clients.
When does an HMO become flats? See how planning, licensing, building regulations and fire safety diverge, and how co-living developers can reduce risk early.
The new NPPF landed on 17 August 2026 and applies to decisions now. What changed for extensions, garden plots, small sites and Midlands projects.
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A modest 1960s bungalow in Lichfield is being extended and reconfigured for downsizing clients. Planning is submitted to Lichfield District Council.
Two backland dormer bungalows in Little Eaton have been approved by Erewash Borough Council with no amendments needed. Here's why that's rarer than it sounds.
T&T Asset Group has appointed JSA to design The Forest, a 73-apartment conversion in Derby city centre, covering architecture, interior design and planning.
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Site progress at Burley Lane in Quarndon: stair structure, basement golf simulator, MVHR routes, full-height glazing and November 2026 completion.
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Lichfield District Council may delay its 2043 Local Plan. If that sounds like a reason to pause your project, read this first. It probably isn't.
Birmingham City Council has approved the groundwork for 5,500 new homes near Walmley. If your own project's been on the back burner, this is your sign.
Golden Brook Developments had a permission for Brooklands and didn't rate the design. We redesigned it, and South Derbyshire has now approved the new scheme.
The design's done and the application's in. Here's what JSA has proposed for Brooklands, a new home in Weston-on-Trent, South Derbyshire.
A permission existed and a design was on the table. Golden Brook Developments decided it wasn't good enough. They were right, and they called us.
Two bespoke self-build homes in Little Eaton designed for standout architecture and smart investment returns.
Modern extension and full internal remodel proposed for character home in sought-after Repton, South Derbyshire.
A new home in the Quarndon Green Belt, won at appeal. How strategic planning and a strong design got a Green Belt house over the line in Derbyshire.
The Windy Rise plot in Little Eaton lost its bungalow to arsonists in 2017, then spent a decade rewilding. Our design for the hillside is now with the council.
Planning approved at Windy Rise, Little Eaton. Erewash Borough Council approved this Green Belt replacement dwelling 11-1. See how JSA Architects made the case.
Why Derby's new Assembly Rooms masterplan validates the mixed-use approach JSA has advocated since 2015.
Bats can hold up homes, commercial sites and listed buildings for most of a year. Survey triggers, council rules, permitted development, licences and costs.
A new Allestree appointment prompts a practical guide to refurbishing or replacing a house, with a worked cost example, surveys, fees and planning questions.
JSA is appointed to design a sensitive extension to a Grade II listed stone building in Amber Valley, Derbyshire, going to pre-application with CGI support.
Poor architectural drawings create assumptions, delays and cost. See why clear, accurate information matters to homeowners and commercial clients.
When does an HMO become flats? See how planning, licensing, building regulations and fire safety diverge, and how co-living developers can reduce risk early.
The new NPPF landed on 17 August 2026 and applies to decisions now. What changed for extensions, garden plots, small sites and Midlands projects.
Twenty years of Midlands pub, bar and restaurant projects, plus a decade behind the bar. What a busy summer tells you about the building you trade from.
Datum is JSA's own project app. Every client gets a login: latest drawings, the brief, where planning's got to and what we did this week. Free on every project.
What Biodiversity Net Gain requires for new developments in England: the 10% target, who's exempt, and how to plan for it from day one.
A modest 1960s bungalow in Lichfield is being extended and reconfigured for downsizing clients. Planning is submitted to Lichfield District Council.
Two backland dormer bungalows in Little Eaton have been approved by Erewash Borough Council with no amendments needed. Here's why that's rarer than it sounds.
T&T Asset Group has appointed JSA to design The Forest, a 73-apartment conversion in Derby city centre, covering architecture, interior design and planning.
See the finished restoration of The Grange, a Georgian villa in South Derbyshire. JSA acted as both architect and project manager throughout.
Site progress at Burley Lane in Quarndon: stair structure, basement golf simulator, MVHR routes, full-height glazing and November 2026 completion.
A vacant period office on Bramble Street, Derby, has approval for three flats. Now the unglamorous part: stairs, acoustics, flood notes and drawings.
Justin Smith Architects is now JSA Architects. Here’s the story, in Justin’s own words, and what the rebrand means for our clients and the practice.
Joao Bravo joins JSA as our 3D artist and visualiser. A University of Derby graduate and qualified architectural technologist, originally from Lisbon.
A contemporary rear extension brings light and space to a Victorian townhouse in Sutton Coldfield, and leaves the period terrace out front exactly as it was.
JSA is working with British Living Group, one of the Midlands' most commercially minded developers, on a 27-room co-living conversion in Derby.
Lichfield District Council may delay its 2043 Local Plan. If that sounds like a reason to pause your project, read this first. It probably isn't.
Birmingham City Council has approved the groundwork for 5,500 new homes near Walmley. If your own project's been on the back burner, this is your sign.
Golden Brook Developments had a permission for Brooklands and didn't rate the design. We redesigned it, and South Derbyshire has now approved the new scheme.
The design's done and the application's in. Here's what JSA has proposed for Brooklands, a new home in Weston-on-Trent, South Derbyshire.
A permission existed and a design was on the table. Golden Brook Developments decided it wasn't good enough. They were right, and they called us.
Two bespoke self-build homes in Little Eaton designed for standout architecture and smart investment returns.
Modern extension and full internal remodel proposed for character home in sought-after Repton, South Derbyshire.
A new home in the Quarndon Green Belt, won at appeal. How strategic planning and a strong design got a Green Belt house over the line in Derbyshire.
The Windy Rise plot in Little Eaton lost its bungalow to arsonists in 2017, then spent a decade rewilding. Our design for the hillside is now with the council.
Planning approved at Windy Rise, Little Eaton. Erewash Borough Council approved this Green Belt replacement dwelling 11-1. See how JSA Architects made the case.
Why Derby's new Assembly Rooms masterplan validates the mixed-use approach JSA has advocated since 2015.
Book a free consultation, or ring and speak to a director directly. Nothing’s committed until you say so.
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