Experienced residential design resource for housebuilder teams, reserved matters applications, outline planning support, and site feasibility — delivered by a designer with 15 years inside major UK housebuilder organisations. Available for new instructions across the UK.
Nicole Lane Architectural Design Studio is run by a designer with over 15 years of experience working within large corporate housebuilder PLCs and privately owned development companies — not alongside them as an external consultant, but inside them, leading project teams and driving schemes through planning.
That background means no learning curve. We understand programme pressures, land bid timescales, planning authority relationships, and what a design team actually needs to move fast. We know how many various planning applications are structured, what a planning officer is looking for, and how to coordinate a consultant team without losing time.
Hundreds of homes taken through planning. Multiple schemes from Outline to Reserved Matters. The capability of a large in-house team — without the overhead.
Design teams at housebuilders and developers are often under-resourced at exactly the moments when they need to move fastest — land bids, Reserved Matters submissions, programme crunches. Bringing in the wrong freelancer costs more time than it saves.
Nicole Lane Architectural Design Studio provides experienced residential design capacity that integrates directly into your team and workflow. Whether you need day-to-day drawing support, someone to lead an RMA through to submission, or a designer who can take a site from feasibility to planning consent independently — we can slot in at whatever stage you need.
We work with developers and housebuilder teams in two main ways, depending on what your project or programme requires:
– Ideal for embedded team support, drawing production, and ongoing programme assistance
– Invoiced weekly or monthly depending on arrangement
– Suitable for short-term peak support or longer ongoing capacity requirements
– Remote working as standard; site visits and office attendance by arrangement
– Ideal for defined project instructions — RMAs, feasibility studies, Outline planning support
– Scope, deliverables, and fee agreed upfront in writing
– Staged payments tied to programme milestones
– Suitable when project scope is clearly defined at the outset
We are currently available for new instructions and can typically mobilise within a few days of agreeing terms. If you have an urgent land bid deadline or a submission window approaching, get in touch directly and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can meet your timescale.
Every instruction — whether it’s a day rate engagement or a full reserved matters application — is handled directly by Nicole. Not a project manager. Not a junior designer working under supervision. The person you brief is the person doing the work.
That means faster decisions, fewer layers of communication, and a designer who understands the full picture of your project from day one. It also means genuine accountability — if something needs resolving, you speak to the person who can resolve it.
Across our career we have worked on residential schemes ranging from small infill sites of 10–20 homes through to major urban extensions of 300 homes and above. For freelance capacity engagements, we work on whatever scale your programme requires. For standalone project instructions, we are most active on schemes in the 20–200 home range, though we will always discuss larger instructions on their merits. Get in touch with the details and we’ll give you a straight answer on fit.
We work remotely as standard and are set up to integrate into your team’s workflows, file sharing systems, and communication tools. For day rate engagements requiring office presence or regular site attendance, this can be arranged and is factored into the rate. We are based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, and can travel across the East and South East easily. For instructions further afield, we are happy to discuss travel and accommodation arrangements.
We do not publish a standard rate card, as fees are dependent on the nature and duration of the engagement, the level of experience required, and the programme. Day rate engagements are agreed before work commences and invoiced weekly or monthly. Fixed fee instructions are scoped and priced based on agreed deliverables and milestones. In both cases, you will have a clear written agreement before any work begins. Contact us directly to discuss fees for your specific requirements — we will respond quickly.
We are accustomed to working on commercially sensitive material and are happy to sign a non-disclosure agreement before any confidential information is shared. We do not discuss, reference, or share any client project information without explicit permission. If you need an NDA in place before initial conversations, send it over and we will turn it around quickly.
Yes. We have experience managing multi-disciplinary consultant teams across transport, ecology, drainage, landscape, heritage, and acoustic disciplines as part of the planning process. We can take on the design lead and coordination role on behalf of your organisation, managing consultant inputs, design team meetings, and programme against your submission target. Alternatively, if you have your own project manager or development manager in place, we are equally comfortable working within an existing team structure.
It is a fair question. The honest answer is: it depends on the scope and programme. We are a focused studio built around delivering quality work rather than volume, and we are selective about what we take on precisely because we do not want to overcommit. For large schemes requiring significant parallel drawing output, we will tell you upfront if the programme is not achievable with our current capacity — and we can discuss how to structure the instruction to make it work. What we will not do is take on work we cannot deliver.
If you have a project, a programme requirement, or simply want to discuss whether we’re the right fit — get in touch directly. We respond to all enquiries within one working day.
📧 hello@nicolelane.co.uk
📞 07828 953500
📍 Based in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk · Working nationwide, preferred regions: East & South East England