Planning Submitted: Brooklands — JSA's Redesign Heads to South Derbyshire District Council

The planning application for Brooklands is now with South Derbyshire District Council.

Golden Brook Developments appointed JSA to redesign a luxury dwelling at Weston-on-Trent - a site that already had planning approval under a different architect, but a design that wasn't performing commercially. We were brought in to start again from the beginning.

This is the submission.

Weston-on-Trent sits in open South Derbyshire countryside, with views that extend across the landscape in most directions. The plot drops significantly across its length.

The building steps with the topography rather than sitting across it. The result is a split-level interior that follows the natural fall of the site, moving through the building and out onto a split-level terrace before opening into the external landscape beyond. That relationship - between the interior levels, the terrace, and the countryside views - was one of the central design moves. It wouldn't have been possible without taking the ground seriously from the beginning.

The Design

The building is three storeys, with tall slender gables that establish the vertical rhythm of the main elevations. Steel rooflines run between and across those gables - a material contrast that gives the roofscape detail and presence without competing with the gable forms.

Externally, the material palette is ashlar stone and grey brick. Both are robust, grounded materials that work at this scale and in this landscape. The stone adds texture and warmth; the grey brick brings definition. Together they produce an exterior that reads as refined without feeling imported from somewhere else.

The link-detached garage is deliberately composed in relation to the main house - connected by a link structure, but separate enough to allow the principal elevation to read cleanly on its own.

At the rear, the split-level terrace steps down toward a 50m outdoor heated lap pool with pergola structure. At that length, the pool is a genuine facility, not an amenity afterthought. The surrounding landscape is divided between formal planting and wildflower meadow - a combination that frames the far-reaching countryside views beyond without closing them off.

The role of 3D visualisation

For a scheme of this scale in a rural setting, the planning submission needed to do more than satisfy the technical requirements. It needed to communicate what the building would actually be - in context, with the light and landscape around it, at the scale it would occupy when built.

That's where our in-house 3D visualisation capability made a material difference. The submission included photorealistic renders showing the building in its site context. Planning officers can assess compliance from drawings. They assess character and quality from visualisations.

The images were produced as part of the same design process — not added at the end, but developed as the design developed. The result was a set of visualisations that genuinely represented what was being proposed, not an optimistic version of it.

See the full project here

What happens now

South Derbyshire District Council will assess the application against local and national planning policy, the design quality of the proposal, and its relationship to the wider landscape setting.

We'll share an update when we have a decision.

In the meantime, if you're working on a scheme where the design and planning strategy need to work together from the start - a significant new build, a site with complex topography, or a project where 3D visualisation is part of the planning approach - talking to us early tends to produce better outcomes.

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JSA handles design, planning applications, and 3D visualisation in-house. Less friction. One conversation.

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JSA Architects Across the Midlands

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