Brookbanks Latest News

Education facilities play a vital role in shaping successful residential communities. Alongside providing essential school places for growing populations, they help create well-connected neighbourhoods, support long-term community wellbeing and contribute positively to placemaking outcomes. For developers bringing forward significant housing schemes, deciding how education infrastructure obligations should be delivered is rarely straightforward. In most cases, this involves either directly delivering a new education facility as part of the development, or making a financial contribution through a Section 106 Agreement to support provision elsewhere. Each approach carries implications for cost, programme, planning strategy and the long-term success of the development.

As development sites become more constrained and expectations around placemaking continue to rise, the interaction between transport planning and acoustics is playing an increasingly important role in successful design. In our latest podcast, “Moving Places, Managing Noise,” Ben Wakling is joined by Melanie A’Lee and Tom Quaife-Jones to explore how these two disciplines come together in practice. The discussion focuses on how early coordination between transport and noise specialists can improve scheme viability, reduce planning risk and ultimately create better places to live.

Expanding our specialist services to include integrated acoustic consultancy strengthens how we support clients across the full development lifecycle. By bringing together building acoustics and environmental noise and vibration, we are able to provide a more coordinated and consistent approach to sound, from early feasibility through to detailed design. This article introduces our acoustics capability at Brookbanks, outlining the expertise within the team and the role acoustics plays in delivering compliant, well‑designed and high‑performing environments across a range of sectors.

The Risks Stalling Healthcare Projects There's a version of every healthcare project that looks deliverable on paper. The site sits within the right catchment. It's in the strategic outline case. The ICS has signed off on the clinical model, the design team have done something genuinely thoughtful with the brief, and the project team is cautiously optimistic about hitting the OBC submission window. Then the ground investigation comes back… or the highways authority raises a junction capacity objection that nobody reviewed thoroughly during site selection. Or the drainage strategy is finalised two weeks before the planning committee, and the mitigation required has discreetly added seven figures to a capital budget that is already full of assumptions. This might be “just how things are”, but it’s important to remember that healthcare projects carry specific consequences that a delayed commercial scheme may not have.

Explore how early cut and fill strategy, sequencing and on‑site material management shape cost, programme and environmental outcomes on development projects.

Rising geopolitical tension does not affect development viability in isolation, but through increasing pressure on energy prices, supply chains and the cost of energy‑intensive materials. Where schemes are progressed on assumptions made under more stable conditions, these pressures can quickly challenge margins, appraisals and deliverability, particularly in a flat housing market. Our article looks at how developers can respond to build cost volatility in a more informed and proportionate way. Drawing on our specialists' experience, it explores how early coordination, design‑led value engineering and integrated decision‑making can help manage cost risk, protect scheme viability and avoid short‑term measures that compromise long‑term quality and value.

Welcome to our April 2026 newsletter. In this month's Brookbanks newsletter, learn more about how high-rise developments can be made more deliverable, with guidance on how you can reduce risk and protect viability. We're also looking back on our April webinar, where Annabel Le Lohe and Katherine Peers gave a rundown of Environmental Impact Assessments and how coordination can make a real impact on project delivery. Plus, there's a recap of this month's podcasts featuring two special guests. Paul Smith, Managing Director at The Strategic Land Group, and Tom Park, Associate Development Director at Caddick Developments. Also, find out which members of our team will be at UKREiiF as well as more about the CPD event we're co-hosting with the LPDF in May.

In this webinar we explore how Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) can be better coordinated to support clearer, more robust planning decisions. Annabel Le Lohé and Katherine Peers set out how EIAs are intended to function, before focusing on the practical considerations that influence how effective an assessment is in practice, from early briefing decisions through to long‑term delivery. The session was aimed at those working across planning, development and technical disciplines who are involved in preparing, coordinating or contributing to EIAs, particularly on large and complex schemes.

Explore how rising energy demand, grid capacity constraints and changing requirements are shaping industry and logistics developments, and what developers can do to manage energy risk and future‑proof schemes.

High‑rise developments rarely fail through lack of ambition, but through risks that are identified too late. When planning, infrastructure, fire strategy, servicing and buildability are treated as separate exercises, schemes often look strong in concept but weaken rapidly at delivery, leading to redesign, delays and value erosion. This article explores why early, joined‑up thinking is essential for tall buildings, and how front‑end due diligence and integrated strategy can reduce risk, protect viability and create schemes that are genuinely deliverable.

Ground conditions remain one of the biggest sources of cost, carbon and programme risk in infrastructure delivery, yet foundation strategy is still too often considered too late. When layouts and levels are fixed before the ground is understood, projects lose the chance to shape efficient, predictable outcomes. This article explores why early, ground‑led design matters and how treating foundation strategy as a front‑end decision can unlock clarity, reduce risk and improve overall project performance.

Explore how decades of UK housing policy, supply constraints, planning and affordability pressures created today’s housing crisis, and what lessons the past offers for future delivery.