Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks across Burbage and the surrounding area.
Southfield Construction works in Burbage and the villages around it. Burbage is small enough that we can usually be here at short notice, and old enough in its middle that a job in the village core is a different proposition from one on the estates around it. They are not the same job, and it is worth asking builders in Burbage which of the two they have done most of.
Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks on the houses here. 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 Hinckley & Bosworth Borough 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 thisBurbage has an old village at its centre and a modern one wrapped around it, and the difference between them is not really about age. It is about where the front door is.
In the historic core, houses were built directly against the footpath. There is no front garden, no set back, and no space at all between the front wall and the public highway. That single characteristic is what the conservation area exists to protect, and the council describes the character of the area precisely that way: a contrast of narrow and open spaces in the street scene, sharpened by the continuous terracing of houses built against the footpath.
For a builder that is the whole story. Everything that would normally happen at the front of a house has nowhere to happen. Scaffold stands on the footway. A delivery blocks the pavement. There is no drive to put a skip on and no verge to stand a mixer on. None of it makes work impossible, and we do it regularly, but it means a Burbage core job is planned around the highway from the first visit rather than the last.
Around that core the village is ordinary and much easier: interwar and post-war semis, and substantial modern estate development out towards Sketchley and the common. Cavity walls, driveways, side access and gardens with room in them. These are the most predictable jobs we do here and they are priced accordingly.
Those are the places we work most often, not the limit of where we go. We cover the town and the surrounding Leicestershire villages, so if you are not sure whether we reach you, just ask.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Burbage street to the next.
Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council is the local planning authority. Planning applications and building control both go through the borough, though you can use an approved inspector for building control instead if you prefer.
Designated in February 1973 and based on the historic village core, this is one of the older designations in the borough and the council has adopted a conservation area statement and management plan for it. Inside it, permitted development rights are reduced and the council has extra control over what can be done without permission.
What is being protected here is specific and worth understanding, because it explains which applications succeed. The council’s own description of the area’s character is about the street scene: the alternation of narrow enclosed stretches with more open ones, and the unbroken run of houses standing directly on the footpath. Anything that breaks that rhythm, a gap where there was none, a set back frontage, a front boundary treatment that pushes the building line back, works against the reason the designation exists. Anything that happens behind the frontage is a much easier conversation.
On the interwar, post-war and modern housing around the core the ordinary rules apply, and a single storey rear extension often falls within permitted development. 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.
Continuous terracing means continuous shared boundaries. In the village core almost any structural work raises a party wall question, and we raise it at quotation stage rather than three weeks into the dig.
This is the practical fact that shapes every job in the old part of Burbage. With houses built hard against the footpath, there is no private ground at the front to work from. Scaffold, skips, deliveries and muck away all end up on the public highway, and the highway here belongs to Leicestershire County Council rather than to the borough that grants your planning permission.
That means licences, applied for by the skip or scaffold company rather than by you or by us, and in place before anything arrives rather than on the morning. It also means the pavement has to stay passable, which on a narrow frontage takes planning rather than good intentions.
In a continuous terrace with no front gardens, your work happens within a few feet of several other front doors. We tell neighbours what is coming and when, because on a street like this goodwill is worth more than it is anywhere else and it costs nothing to ask.
Driveways are the norm, no licence is needed, and both the cost and about a week of lead time come out of the job.
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.
