Planning Objection Letters — The Midlands

Our Midlands Base

Planning Voice is headquartered at Works Social, a co-working space in Nottingham’s Lace Market — giving us direct familiarity with Midlands planning authorities and their adopted policy frameworks. We have recent experience of a successful objection in Bassetlaw District Council (Nottinghamshire), where we challenged garage extensions within a conservation area on heritage harm and overdevelopment grounds, achieving a withdrawal.

Planning Policy Across the Midlands

The Midlands encompasses a wide range of planning authorities — from major urban councils such as Birmingham, Nottingham City, Leicester City, and Derby City, to rural district authorities covering large areas of agricultural land, Green Belt, and historic market towns. Each has its own adopted Local Plan, though the NPPF 2024 provides the overarching national framework that applies across all.

Heritage considerations are significant across the Midlands region. Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Lincolnshire have numerous conservation areas and listed buildings within historic market towns and villages. The Peak District National Park straddles the border of Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and applications in or near the National Park engage an especially demanding design and landscape framework.

HMO applications are a significant issue in university cities and towns across the Midlands — Nottingham, Leicester, Coventry, and Birmingham all have large student populations and active HMO markets. Many of these authorities have adopted Article 4 Directions removing permitted development rights in areas of HMO concentration.

Getting Started

Contact us by phone or email. Being Nottingham-based means we have a particular familiarity with East Midlands planning policy, but we handle objections across the full Midlands region with the same rigour and speed.