COMMERCIAL / CARE HOMES & SPECIALIST CARE
Care accommodation that satisfies planning, CQC and the conservation officer.
Design and consent for care and specialist accommodation — dementia-friendly layouts, fire strategy, and (where needed) heritage and ecology, delivered as one scheme.
- Sector
- Care · healthcare
- We handle
- Planning · LBC · fire · ecology
- Standards
- CQC · DSDC
- Proven
- Kenmore Group, Dorset
- “We need more beds and the site has more to give.”
- “The obvious expansion route involves a listed building.”
- “Who coordinates CQC, fire, planning and heritage without losing the plot?”
Care accommodation sits at the junction of the hardest consenting disciplines: planning policy for development in the countryside, CQC fundamental standards, dementia-friendly design guidance (DSDC, King's Fund), fire strategy for non-ambulant residents, and — on the sites worth having — heritage and ecology. The scheme that succeeds reconciles all of them in one application.
At Hyde Care Home we did precisely that for the Kenmore Group: dementia care rooms in a Grade II listed stable block, connected by a contemporary glazed link, with a protected bat roost mitigated under a Natural England licence and a fire strategy agreed with Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue. Approved 2026, no appeal.
- Hyde Care Home: planning + listed building consent + EPS licence, secured together, no appeal.
- Dementia-design literacy — DSDC and King's Fund principles applied within real constraints.
- A background in healthcare and retirement-living design going back to the practice's roots.
Hyde Care Home, Walditch — dementia care in a listed stable block
Heritage, ecology, fire and specialist care design reconciled in one consent for the Kenmore Group. Approved by Dorset Council, 2026.
Read the case studyCan a listed building house care accommodation?
Yes — we've consented dementia care rooms inside a Grade II listed stable block, with the heritage case and CQC-compliant layouts agreed together.
Who handles the fire strategy?
A specialist fire engineer inside our team's programme — means of escape for non-ambulant residents, compartmentation within heritage fabric, and fire-service access all agreed with the authority.
What about protected species?
We've run the full ecology pathway: bat surveys to BCT guidelines, Natural England EPS licensing, mitigation and habitat enhancement — as conditions of a granted consent.
START HERE
Expanding care provision? We've walked this path.
A short conversation with Tom is the fastest way to find out what’s possible — no fee, no obligation, an honest read on your site.