Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks across Coventry and the surrounding area.
Southfield Construction works across Coventry from a base a short run down the A428. The city is close enough that we are on site early rather than arriving mid morning, which matters more than it sounds when a job needs a full day. Start times are worth raising when you compare builders in Coventry, because an eight o clock start and a half ten arrival are the same price and not the same day.
Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks across the city and the villages on its edge. We look after the Building Regulations side of the work, arranging the inspections and seeing the job through to sign off, and you get a price in writing before anything starts.
Four things we commit to on every job, rather than four things we say about ourselves.
Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations. We arrange the Coventry City Council inspections, meet the inspector on site at each stage and see the work through to sign off. We do not make the application itself, and we will tell you what is needed and when.
Free, and you get it before you commit to us. Party walls and skip licences are raised at quotation stage, not three weeks into the dig.
The same people do the groundworks, the brickwork and the fit out. Nobody hands your job to a subcontractor you have never met.
You get a straight answer rather than a padded price. It costs us a job occasionally and saves you a great deal more.
These are the trades we carry out ourselves. Every one leads to a page describing that work in detail.
Footings, brickwork, roof and full fit out
More about this
Patios, paving, decking, fencing and turf
More about thisCoventry is not one housing stock, it is three, and which one you have changes almost everything about how a job runs.
There is Victorian and Edwardian terracing in places like Chapelfields, Stoke and Earlsdon. Chapelfields is the clearest example: building began there in 1847 to house the watchmaking trade the city was then known for, and the result is street after street of small to medium terraces with gardens. They are good houses. They also have shallow foundations by modern standards, solid walls rather than cavities, and access that is usually through the property rather than around it.
There is a very large interwar and post-war layer, because the city was rebuilt on a scale almost nowhere else in the country matched. Out through Coundon, Cheylesmore, Radford, Wyken and Tile Hill you find semi-detached and estate housing from the 1930s through to the 1960s. This is the most straightforward stock we work on: cavity walls, side access more often than not, and gardens with room to work.
And there is modern infill and estate development, which brings its own considerations, usually estate management arrangements or covenants that need checking before a design is settled rather than after.
Post-war housing has one particular trap. Non-traditional construction, meaning system-built or prefabricated types rather than brick and block, turns up across the city and it changes what can be done to a wall. We establish the construction before we design an opening into it.
Those are the places we work most often, not the limit of where we go. We cover the town and the surrounding West Midlands villages, so if you are not sure whether we reach you, just ask.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Coventry street to the next.
Coventry City Council is the local planning authority for the whole city. Unlike the district councils around it, Coventry is a unitary authority, which means the city council deals with planning, building control and the roads. That last point catches people out and it is covered separately below.
Many single storey rear extensions on the interwar and post-war housing across the city fall within permitted development, so no planning application is needed. Permitted development is not an exemption from Building Regulations, and a full plans application is still required. We do not make that application, but we arrange and meet the inspections that follow it and we see the work through to sign off.
Coventry has eighteen conservation areas and fourteen Article 4 directions, which is a lot for one authority and means the answer genuinely varies street by street. Spon Street was designated in August 1969 and Stoke Green in December 1968, both with boundary adjustments approved in January 2004. Chapelfields followed in November 1976. The council has also consulted on proposed designation at Earlsdon and Brownshill Green, so if you are in either, check the current position before assuming permitted development applies.
The Article 4 direction at Lady Herbert’s Garden and The Burges was made on 8 July 2025 and covers Burges, Chauntry Place, Hales Street and Palmer Lane. Where an Article 4 applies, things that are normally permitted, such as replacing windows or taking down a front boundary wall, need permission first. We check the designation before anything is drawn, because in Coventry the odds of being in one are higher than most people expect.
Coventry has an Article 4 direction covering the creation of new houses in multiple occupation. If your plan is to convert a family house into shared accommodation, that needs planning permission here rather than being automatic. It does not affect you if you are extending your own home, and it is worth saying plainly because the two get confused constantly.
This is the one people get wrong. Across Warwickshire, a skip standing on a public road is licensed by Warwickshire County Council as the highway authority. Coventry is a unitary authority and is its own highway authority, so a skip on a Coventry street is licensed by Coventry City Council instead. If a contractor tells you they are applying to the county for a Coventry job, they have not done this here before.
The application is made by the skip company rather than by you or by us, and it needs to be in before the skip is due rather than on the day.
On the older terraced streets in Chapelfields, Stoke and Earlsdon there is frequently nowhere to put a skip except the road, and often no off street parking for a van either. Some of these streets are also under residents’ parking schemes. We sort the practicalities out before the first delivery rather than discovering them with a lorry sitting outside.
No skip licence is needed at all. Out through Coundon, Cheylesmore and Wyken that is usually the position, and it takes both cost and lead time out of the job.
We also work across Kenilworth, Bedworth, and Nuneaton.
Send photographs and a rough brief, or call and talk it through. We will tell you if a job is not right for us.
Southfield Construction (Rugby) Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company 14209138.
