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Built aroundhow developersactually work

A design consultancy organised around consent and delivery rather than around style, working nationwide for developers, operators and care providers.

The practice

What Nutter Design Group is

Practice
Nutter Design Group
Disciplines
Architecture, Planning, Development
Coverage
Nationwide, across the United Kingdom

Architecture, feasibility and development consultancy for residential, commercial and specialist care projects across the UK.

The practice is organised around consent and delivery rather than around style. Most schemes do not fail because the architecture was wrong; they fail because a site was bought on an assumption that policy did not support, because an application answered the wrong objection, or because the information issued for construction left enough open that a contractor priced the risk.

Those are the problems this practice is appointed to remove. The design work is what makes the resulting building worth having, but it is not what a developer is buying on the day they appoint someone.

Work is delivered nationwide, across four sectors with genuinely different regulatory realities — a children’s home and a motorway drive-thru fail for entirely different reasons, and knowing which reasons apply is most of the value.

7+ years experience
Long enough to have seen how schemes fail, which is most of what a consultant is actually paid for.
Nationwide projects
Work is delivered across the UK rather than within one county, which is what operators running national programmes need.
Planning and technical delivery
Both halves in one practice: the consent and the information that lets the consented building be built.
Feasibility-led
Projects start with what a site will support, not with a design that has to be walked back once policy is read.
Collaborative process
Working inside the client's team and alongside their other consultants, rather than issuing drawings over a wall.

Operators and developers we work with

  • APEA
  • EG On The Move
  • EV On The Move
  • Welcome Break
  • Greggs
  • McDonald's
  • Starbucks
  • Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen
  • Yale
  • Ring
  • One Home Care
  • Elm Residential Care
  • Everybody Health & Leisure
  • Portico Sport
  • Hexa Padel
  • Clubhouse
  • Padel Ventures
  • Euro Garages
  • Modu-lite

Who you will work with

The people

Three people, with the planning, design and engineering between them to take a scheme from the offer to the opening.

  • Portrait of Chris Nutter, Founder and Director

    Chris Nutter

    Founder and Director · BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology

    Chris began his career on public sector schemes in excess of £100 million and went on to lead multi-million-pound private schemes, before building Nutter Design Group from the ground up through referrals and long-standing business partnerships.

    He gives clear, commercially grounded advice, developed with multibillion-pound operators across roadside, retail, leisure, EV charging, care and residential projects. His specialism is rollout delivery: appraising sites at acquisition speed, securing consent and working to operator standards, with every site judged on cost, programme and return.

    • BSc (Hons) Architectural Technology
    • Founder, Nutter Design Group
    • £100m+ public sector scheme experience
    • Business founder and mentor

    Connect on LinkedIn

  • Portrait of Jonathan Baron

    Jonathan Baron

    Mechanical and electrical engineer · BEng (Hons), MCIBSE, MIET

    Jonathan has more than twenty years in electrical and building services, progressing from a practical electrical background into mechanical and electrical consultancy across commercial, residential, healthcare, education, civic and transport projects.

    His principal specialism is electrical engineering: LV distribution, protection, high-capacity infrastructure and EV charging systems, supported by broad mechanical and electrical building services knowledge. His experience spans feasibility, M&E coordination, utility and DNO infrastructure, technical due diligence and construction support.

    • Member of CIBSE
    • MIET
    • CIBSE ESG Committee Member
    • 20+ years' industry experience

    Connect on LinkedInEV Design

  • Portrait of Imran Musa

    Imran Musa

    RIBA Part II Architectural Assistant

    Part II Architectural Assistant with four years' experience in commercial architecture, including roadside retail and petroleum forecourt schemes.

    Having completed his Master of Architecture, Imran works full-time in practice, with experience across the stages of design and delivery. Before that he spent three and a half years at ADS Design, first as a Part 1 assistant alongside his studies and then as a Part 2.

    • MArch Architecture, University of Huddersfield, 2025
    • BA (Hons) Architecture, RIBA Part 1, University of Huddersfield, 2022
    • AutoCAD 2023 Essentials, Autodesk Authorized Training Center
    • Architecture, architectural design, interior design, AutoCAD and 3D visualisation

How a project runs

Four stages, in order

Numbered because they genuinely are a sequence: each one settles something the next depends on. A project that skips a stage pays for it later, usually in a change nobody wanted to make.

Appraise

What the site will support and what it is worth. Capacity, constraints and planning risk, tested early enough to inform the offer rather than explain the loss.

Consent

The application, prepared to be argued. Pre-application where it will earn its cost, the supporting case written as part of the submission, and conditions scoped rather than discovered.

Resolve

Building Regulations and the technical package. The detail that turns a consent into something a contractor can price without pricing the risk of the gaps.

Deliver

Through construction, answering queries as they arrive rather than letting them accumulate. The measure of this stage is how few surprises reach the client.

Where we work

Four sectors

Worth a conversation?

If the way the practice works sounds like the way you would want your scheme run, the next step is a short conversation about it.