Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks across Bedworth and the surrounding area.
Southfield Construction works across Bedworth and the villages around it. It is a short run for us and the town is one we know well enough to give a straight answer on the phone before anybody drives anywhere. If you are ringing round builders in Bedworth, ask how far each of them is travelling, because it decides how often anybody is actually on your job.
Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks on the housing in and around the town. 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 Nuneaton & Bedworth 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 thisBedworth was a coal town, and almost everything about building here traces back to that.
The scale is easy to underestimate. In 1939 the pits in and around the town produced 5.8 million tons between twenty collieries. Newdigate, the last pit in the Bedworth area, did not close until 1982, and Coventry Pit at Keresley ran into the early 1990s. That is not distant history, it is within the working life of people still living in the houses.
The housing followed the pits. Bermuda is the clearest surviving example: a model colliery village built in 1893 for the Griff Colliery Company, originally ninety miners’ houses and now around 130 brick terraced cottages. It is remarkably little altered, and it is held as an area of restraint precisely so that it stays that way. There is an Article 4 direction over it. If you own one of those cottages, assume less is permitted than you would expect and check before you plan.
Around the older core there is Victorian and Edwardian terracing, and the Nicholas Chamberlaine Almshouses of 1840 on All Saints Square, Grade II* listed and still doing the job they were built for. Beyond that the town is mostly interwar, post-war and modern estate housing out through Collycroft, Goodyers End and Exhall, which is the most straightforward stock to work on: cavity walls, side access, and gardens with room in them.
What ties it together for a builder is what is underneath rather than what is on top, and that is covered in the planning notes below.
Those are the places we work most often, not the limit of where we go. We cover the town and the surrounding Warwickshire villages, so if you are not sure whether we reach you, just ask.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Bedworth street to the next.
Nuneaton & Bedworth 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.
Many single storey rear extensions on the interwar, post-war and modern housing around Bedworth 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.
This is the part that makes Bedworth different from the towns around it. The area sits on a worked coalfield, and past underground mining is a genuine consideration for anything that involves new foundations. The way to find out about a specific address is a Coal Authority mining report, which is inexpensive and quick, and the sensible time to get one is before a design is settled rather than after a trench is open. We are not going to tell you your street is affected, because that is not something anybody can say from a photograph. We are going to tell you that finding out is cheap and that guessing is not.
The borough has five conservation areas: Bedworth Town Centre, Nuneaton Town Centre, Abbey, Bulkington village and Hawkesbury Junction, with 91 listed buildings across the borough. The council has also made Article 4 directions covering Bermuda Village, Bulkington, the Abbey conservation area and Hollyhurst Farm. Where one applies, things normally permitted, such as replacing windows or altering a frontage, need permission first. We check the designation before anything is drawn.
The colliery terraces and the Victorian housing were built tight, so shared boundaries are close more often than not. If work comes near or against one you are likely to need a party wall award, and we raise that at quotation stage rather than three weeks into the dig.
The borough handles your planning application, but Warwickshire County Council is the highway authority, so a skip standing on a public road in Bedworth is licensed by the county. The application has to come from the skip owner rather than from you or from us, and it must be in no less than five working days before the skip is placed. There is a £97 administration and inspection fee, and the skip company needs £10m public liability cover and a valid waste carrier’s licence. A retrospective application costs more than getting it right first time.
In Bermuda and the older terraced streets there is frequently nowhere to stand a skip except the carriageway, and often no off street parking for a van either. That does not stop the work, but it changes the sequence and the price, and it needs establishing before the first delivery is booked rather than on the morning.
No licence is needed at all. Out through Collycroft, Goodyers End and the modern estates that is usually the position, and it takes both the fee and about a week of lead time 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.
