One planner, and the cases nobody else wanted.
Hollington Consultancy is Tom Hollington. Fifteen years as an architectural designer on the South Coast, most of it spent getting consents in the sectors where consent is hardest — licensed premises, pharmacy, care, retirement living, heritage.
Tom, photographed for the studio.
Where the experience comes from
Tom spent most of his career at Hollington Architect & Design Team Ltd, a practice that specialised in design for the licensed trade. He worked for national operators — Greene King, Mitchells & Butlers, Whitbread, Marston’s, Enterprise Inns, Brains — and for independent bars and restaurants across the South Coast, on the same terms.
Tom was the lead designer on Day Lewis Plc’s pharmacy development programme, securing the planning permissions and licences behind new sites. Wording awaiting sign-off
He later took that work into healthcare and retirement living, on care schemes and for operators including McCarthy and Stone. Those are among the most heavily conditioned buildings in the planning system: fire, CQC expectation, heritage fabric and planning policy all pulling in different directions on the same drawing.
That’s the useful part of the background. Not the buildings. The consents.
Advice, not construction
This practice sells one thing: planning expertise, on its own.
Not drawings you didn’t ask for. Not a build package. Not a route that ends with us quoting for the build work. If you already have an architect, keep them. If you already have a builder, keep them. What most people in a planning fight are missing isn’t a designer — it’s someone who knows how the decision gets made, and what the council actually has to be persuaded of.
If you want one team to design it, consent it and build it, that’s our sister studio, Set Square Studio, and we’ll say so.
Consents handled
What we turn down
Draft — written to show the shape; every sentence to be replaced with what Tom actually does.
We don’t take cases where the answer is obviously no and the client wants to hear otherwise. We don’t take work where the fee would be larger than what’s at stake. And we’ll tell you at the first conversation if we think you’d be better off resubmitting than appealing — that conversation is free, and it’s often the whole job.
Credentials
RTPI / RIBA / CIAT, or none — awaiting confirmation.
Insurer and level, if it’s to be stated.
Send us the site and the problem.
An honest read on where you stand, within 24 hours — including when the answer is that you shouldn’t proceed.
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