Extensions in Leicester, priced in writing before anything starts.
An extension in Leicester begins with a designation check, because with 24 conservation areas and Article 4 directions over Stoneygate and most of New Walk, the odds of being caught by one are higher here than in the towns around the city.
Inside a conservation area the permitted development limits reduce and a side extension loses its permitted development rights entirely. Where an Article 4 applies, external alterations including windows and doors need permission too, which matters for an extension because the new openings and the ones you disturb in the existing house both fall under it.
The Victorian villa stock in Stoneygate and around it is genuinely good to extend. Deep plots, generous rooms, solid structure and usually side access. The constraint is not space, it is consent, and the design has to start from that rather than run into it at week six.
Out on the interwar, post-war and modern housing at the city edges the picture is ordinary. 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 a drive for the skip and side access for the materials.
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 rather than full permission, with neighbours notified and an answer in about six weeks.
Our extensions work is set out in more detail there, including the stages of a build and how the Building Control inspections fit around them.
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 extensions page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Leicester street to the next.
A skip on a Leicester street is licensed by the city council, not by Leicestershire County Council, because the city is its own highway authority. On a villa plot with a drive no licence is needed at all, which takes both the fee and about a week of lead time out of the job.
Two storey work needs permission far more often than people expect, and on the tighter terraced plots it also needs a careful look at what it does to a neighbour’s daylight. If we think an application is going to struggle we will say so at the quotation stage.
Where an Article 4 applies, we will tell you which parts of your scheme it catches before any drawings are commissioned, because finding out afterwards is the expensive order to do it in.
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.
