Loft Conversions in Leicester, priced in writing before anything starts.
Leicester has some genuinely good lofts, because the Victorian and Edwardian housing was built with roofs that had proper pitch and proper height.
On the villa stock around Stoneygate and Clarendon Park a conversion is often the best value space in the house, since the roof and walls already exist. Head height still needs measuring rather than assuming, because floor build up and insulation take more out of a roof than people expect, but the odds here are better than on most stock we see.
The constraint is the frontage. A dormer on the roof slope facing the road is not permitted development anywhere, and inside a conservation area, particularly where an Article 4 direction is already controlling external alterations, anything that changes the roofline the street can see will be examined hard. Rear dormers and rooflights are a much easier conversation and are usually where the space wants to go.
The interwar and modern housing at the city edges is trussed, which means the structure has to be reworked rather than simply strengthened. That is routine work, and it is not the same job or the same price as a cut roof.
The permitted development volume allowance is forty cubic metres on a terrace and fifty on a semi or detached house. Escape, fire separation and stair position are all Building Regulations matters. Our loft conversion page goes through the structural options and the order the work happens in.
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 Leicester 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.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our loft conversions page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Leicester street to the next.
On a terrace or a semi, where new floor beams bear onto a wall shared with a neighbour, the work is notifiable under the Party Wall Act and notice has to be served before anything starts. The notice periods are fixed and they are the usual reason a start date slips by a month.
Steels that will not go up the stairs come in through the roof, needing a lift and a part day road closure. On a residents’ parking street that takes arranging with the city council in advance, and we price it in rather than springing it on you.
Almost every villa loft here has a cold water tank in it, and a conversion has to deal with that rather than build around it. Moving to a sealed system frees the roof space but changes pressure and flow throughout the house.
Part of our wider building work in Leicester.
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.
