Extensions in Northampton, priced in writing before anything starts.
Extending in Northampton depends on whether your plot was ever a working one, and in the older parts of town a surprising number were.
In the Boot and Shoe Quarter the rear yard behind a terrace was not a garden. It was working space, and it often had a small workshop or outbuilding at the end of it. Those buildings frequently survive, converted into sheds, garages or earlier extensions, and they matter to an extension project in two ways. They may occupy exactly the footprint you want, and they may be considered part of the industrial fabric the conservation area exists to protect, which makes demolishing them a different conversation from clearing a garden shed.
The upside is that these plots frequently have rear access, because the yards needed servicing. A back entry transforms the practicality and the cost of an extension compared with a terrace that has none, and it is one of the first things we look for.
Out on the interwar, post-war and modern housing 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 side access and a drive for the skip. Inside any of the town’s twenty conservation areas those limits reduce and a side extension loses its permitted development rights.
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 described 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 West Northamptonshire 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 Northampton street to the next.
Where a skip stands on the road it is licensed by West Northamptonshire Council, which is also the authority deciding your application, and the skip company applies for it. On a terrace with a rear entry a skip can sometimes go in the back instead, which is worth establishing early because it changes both the price and the disruption.
Before an old workshop or outbuilding comes down we check its status rather than assuming. In the Boot and Shoe Quarter a structure that looks like a dilapidated shed may be exactly the kind of surviving industrial building the designation was made to keep.
Two storey work needs permission far more often than people expect, and on the tight terraced plots it needs a careful look at a neighbour’s daylight. If we think an application will struggle, we say so at the quotation stage rather than taking your money to find out.
Part of our wider building work in Northampton.
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.
