Landscaping in Market Harborough, priced in writing before anything starts.
Landscaping is the trade most directly affected by the Little Bowden Article 4 direction, because boundary treatments are precisely what it protects.
Front walls, railings, gates, fences and hedges are the things that give that area its character, and the direction removes the permitted development rights that would normally let you change them. The council has acted on this specifically: in May 2020 it served an Immediate Article 4 Direction on land at Queen’s Street in Little Bowden so that planning permission became required for works including erecting a gate, fence or wall.
The practical upshot is that a front garden project in Little Bowden starts with the council. Widening a drive by taking out a length of wall, replacing a hedge with fence panels or putting up a new gate are all things a householder would elsewhere simply arrange, and here they are applications. We check first, every time, and we will tell you when something you have been quoted for by somebody else needs permission that nobody has mentioned.
Beyond the boundary rules the usual ones apply. Front hard surfacing over five square metres needs a permeable material or drainage to a soft area inside your own boundary, or it needs planning permission, and in a conservation area there may be further control on top.
Our landscaping page shows the range of the work, from patios and paths through to full garden rebuilds.
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 Harborough 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 landscaping page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Market Harborough street to the next.
Every tree in a conservation area is protected whether or not a specific order exists, which means six weeks written notice to the district before even a heavy prune. Removing a protected tree is a criminal offence and the fine can exceed the cost of the whole garden.
Where a front boundary genuinely does need to come out to get plant onto a plot, that is a conversation with the council in the designated areas rather than a decision on site, and it belongs in the programme.
Levels and retaining structures are designed and drained rather than stacked. Anything holding back a real change in level is a structural element and gets treated as one.
Hedges count as boundary treatment as well, which surprises people who assume the rules only cover walls and fences.
Part of our wider building work in Market Harborough.
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.
