Extensions in Banbury, priced in writing before anything starts.
An extension in Banbury lives or dies on the material, and that decision has to be made at the start rather than at first fix.
If the existing building is local ironstone, an extension has three honest options. Match the stone, which means sourcing reclaimed or newly quarried material of the right colour and bedding it in a compatible lime mortar. Use a deliberately different but sympathetic material, which can work extremely well and is sometimes what a conservation officer prefers to a poor imitation. Or use reconstituted stone, which is cheaper and which, in a conservation area alongside genuine ironstone, very rarely convinces anybody.
We will give you a straight opinion on which of those your building can carry, and we will tell you the lead time, because reclaimed stone is weeks rather than days and it is a common cause of a job stalling.
On the brick housing in Grimsbury and Neithrop, and on the modern estates, this is conventional work. A single storey rear extension of up to four metres on a detached house or three on a semi can fall within permitted development, with side access and a drive for the skip. Inside any of Cherwell’s 60 conservation areas the limits reduce and a side extension loses its permitted development rights entirely.
There is also the larger home extension route on unlisted property: up to eight metres on a detached house or six on any other, by prior approval, with neighbours notified and an answer in about six weeks. Our extensions work is set out in more detail there, including how the inspections fit around the build.
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 Cherwell District 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 extensions page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Banbury street to the next.
Where a skip stands on the road it is licensed by Oxfordshire County Council rather than by Cherwell, and the skip company applies for it. In the villages there is usually somewhere on the plot instead, which removes the licence entirely.
Stone is heavier than brick for the same wall, which affects deliveries, handling and sometimes the foundation design. It is not a problem, it is a thing to allow for, and we allow for it at quotation stage rather than discovering it when a pallet cannot be moved.
Two storey work needs permission far more often than people expect, and on a stone building the visual impact carries more weight with a conservation officer than the same addition would elsewhere. If we think an application will struggle we say so early.
Part of our wider building work in Banbury.
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.
