Logika Group Toby Gibbs on the firm’s meteoric 31% headcount growth
Logika Group is a fast-growing consultancy which delivers intelligent solutions for the environment. Board Director Toby Gibbs reflects on the firm’s recent successes, how environmental consultants can add greater strategic value earlier in the planning process, and what lies ahead for the group in 2026.
Logika Group has grown rapidly in recent years. What has been fundamental to your success?
I think the combination of excellent people and quality service has been key to our success. We fully recognise the value of our staff, and we strive to recruit the best people into the business in line with our core values. Furthermore, we constantly aim to deliver innovative and cost-effective solutions to our clients, which helps us retain existing relationships and foster new ones.
At the close of 2025 Logika Group reported a 31% increase in headcount for the year. As the team has grown rapidly, how have you maintained company culture and multidisciplinary collaboration?
Not only has the team grown significantly, but we have expanded into new offices in Brighton and Leeds which also presents additional challenges. Our three Core Values of Integrity, Communication and Community are embedded into everything we do, encouraging professionalism, collaboration and open communications across our teams. We hold regular Group Briefings, and social events across all of our offices, further encouraging open communications.
What role does innovation - whether digital tools, data, or new methodologies - play in the Groups growth strategy?
Logika Group has recently launched an expanded Data and Digital Services offering to improve environmental decision making. The Service covers a range of disciplines, including actionable digital insights from data assets to help clients make data-informed decisions, designing efficiency-oriented technologies to improve workflow automation, and creating digital twin models of physical systems. The range of Services uses data visualisation, geospatial solutions, Artificial Intelligence and machine-learning, and is fundamental to our forward strategy.
In your view, how can environmental consultants add more strategic value earlier in the planning process?
A key answer to this question is early engagement in a project. By working with a project team from its inception, we are able to provide advice that helps our clients navigate the often-complex planning process. Our leading technical experts can provide recommendations for scheme optimisation to minimise impacts and maximise opportunities, before undertaking formal assessments that help meet planning requirements.
How do you expect policy reform, planning changes, or economic pressures to shape your strategy over the next two to three years?
There is still considerable uncertainty around how planning and policy reform might change the work we do. Within the world of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects and the Development Consent Order process that support the consenting of these, the recent passing of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill (PIB) has removed the need statutory consultation and this has already had an effect on the work we do. No longer are we being asked to write very detailed Preliminary Environmental Information Reports that resemble highly technical Environmental Statements with the focus now being on the provision of more concise, and highly accessible environmental information albeit these will still need to be informed by technical assessment work. We see this as positive and that these is an opportunity for consultation to be better aimed at a wider audience.
Related, the PIB has also introduced Environmental Delivery Plans as a way of compensating for environmental effects at a more strategic level. Again, there is the opportunity for these to support more general environmental enhancement although considerable care needs to be taken to ensure that they are not used as a way for a developer to simply pay a sum of money that eliminates the need for them to progress good design that sensitively considers relevant environmental implications. They should be a last resort and only used when there is no other option.
Do you think sustainability is now truly embedded in the planning process, or is it still too often seen as a compliance exercise?
Over the last 10 years or so, sustainability has become ever more a key part of both the planning and development design process, with experts expected to be key contributors. The EIA process is moving from one that was focused on assessing effects and proposing mitigation to one that informs better decision making in the design process with sustainability being embedded as a design principle right from the very start. It is very positive.
How significant has Biodiversity Net Gain been in reshaping the way developments are planned and delivered?
Certainly, biodiversity enhancement is now an important part of landscape design strategies. If anything, however, it is too prescriptive with some schemes finding they have to ‘shoehorn in’ biodiversity measures simply to achieve the required 10% gain and sometimes at the expense of other important open space requirements. At Logika we are really positive about Biodiversity Net Gain and the benefits it is creating but do feel that there is a little way to go to make it most effective.
What’s next for Logika Group in 2026?
During 2026 we plan to continue to build on the growth that we have achieved over the past two years – both maintaining and building on our existing client base, extending our geographies both in the UK and beyond, and continuing to grow whilst maintaining the Core Values that are important to us.
