We are a vibrant and successful employee-owned business.
We weave together inputs from large teams of experts to craft master plans, strategies, policies, guidance and planning consents that shape the sustainable places of the future. We constantly endeavour to ensure that our outputs are the best that they can be.
Our service to our clients rests upon more than thirty five years’ of experience in shaping and making change in the built environment, contributing at every stage from conception to completion.
Shared ambition to create great places and support economic activity underpins our reputation and our focus. We care, so we strive, and advocate for better outcomes. Through all that we do, we seek to deliver sustainable and equitable development, in the right locations.
How we work
We have been an employee-owned business since 2015. Independence is a cornerstone of our integrity and continued success. Without external investors or shareholders, we have the freedom to invest in our employees, our community, our charitable interests, and the causes that we and our clients most value.
Since David Lock Associates was founded in 1988, we have been based in Milton Keynes. We draw inspiration from being within one the most successful and dynamic planned settlements in the world. We work in a functional, well-connected, economically active, green, and unashamedly modern environment and the lived experience and lessons this has provided our practice are many and varied. As the city has grown and prospered so have we.
We value the professional and social benefits of being office based and working collaboratively face to face. We have embraced some flexible working practices, including a satellite design studio in London, but still work together in Milton Keynes every week. This means we maintain strong project teams, embed individuals with unique and specialist skills, and communicate best practice, strengthening our ability to provide our clients with the best advice and outcomes. The leaders of our business lead our projects from inception to completion, whether the commitment is for weeks or for decades. Committed service and dedication shape our identity and repeatedly set us apart from our competitors.
What We Do
We create value for our clients by applying critical thinking and a combination of specialist skills. The geography of our work spreads across the UK, with occasional ventures further afield when opportunities arise, or interest is sparked.
Compelling and purposeful spatial planning and master planning is what we are passionate about and at the heart of what we do. We work on projects from strategic scale, including national policy and regional spatial planning and master planning, down to detailed applications.
Intelligent consultancy, a personal and committed service, along with the range and complexity of our important work, motivates our team and underpins our many varied long-standing working relationships. Our clients include master developers, major landowners, investors, housebuilders, manufacturing companies, infrastructure providers including logistics and data storage specialists, government organisations, local authorities, health providers and advocacy and research bodies.
Our Offer
Our offer goes far beyond the norm. We are problem solvers. We respond creatively to the many and varied challenges that stand in the way of creating successful places and fulfil our clients’ aspirations. It is very often the less tangible aspects of our offer which our clients value most. We also play an important role in ensuring that the inputs produced by co-consultants are scoped, coordinated and formulated to support the masterplans and approval gateways which we manage.
We do difficult things. The knowledge and expertise necessary to bring forward and deliver large, complex, multi-faceted projects is in short supply, and we have proven credentials. We co-ordinate and apply ourselves to the team effort, and know what it takes to deliver and shape best practice.
Sustainability
As planners and masterplanners, we are confident in our ability to lay solid foundations for sustainable growth. Our master plans shape connected places where the natural and man-made can comfortably co-exist, where carbon neutral futures can be attained, and where healthy lifestyles can be pursued. Our strategies and consents are carefully crafted, fixing matters which deliver what is essential, and allowing flexibility for when the changing world demands a better or unforeseen solution. The art of successful planning and design is to shape places that are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable and resilient.
We are Planet Mark certified, and reducing our operational carbon footprint year on year, but this is only one part of our commitment to sustainability. Our approach looks at more than isolated technical solutions; in our work we seek to grasp this opportunity to understand how policy requirements and placemaking ambition can be combined to make a great and sustainable built environment.
Community
Growing and strengthening communities is at the core of what we do. As an employee-owned business, we use our resources to support charities and groups that make a difference to our community, and wider causes that matter to our team and clients. We have a dedicated and active Charity and Community Group that supports and contributes to important initiatives.
We proudly support Milton Keynes Community Foundation, The Parks Trust, the City Discovery Centre, Milton Keynes Gallery and are a founding sponsor of Milton Keynes Theatre.