Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks across Stratford-upon-Avon and the surrounding area.
Southfield Construction works in Stratford-upon-Avon and the villages around it. It is the most heavily protected place we work, and the two questions that decide almost every job here are whether the building is listed and where the water goes.
Extensions, renovations, roofing and groundworks across the town and the surrounding villages. 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 Stratford-on-Avon 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.
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 thisThe Stratford district contains over 3,300 listed buildings and structures, which is an extraordinary number and the single most important fact about building here.
In the town centre a great deal of that is timber framed, and timber framing behaves in ways that catch out anybody used to masonry. The frame moves seasonally. It was never square and it is further from square now. Panels between the timbers were built to breathe, and the number of them that have been filled with cement render or modern brick over the last century is the reason so many of these buildings have decayed frames behind sound looking walls.
There is also a large amount of building that looks older than it is. Stratford has been rebuilding and restoring itself in a historic idiom for a very long time, so black and white on an elevation is not proof of a genuine frame, and a plain rendered front is not proof there is no frame behind it. We establish what a building actually is before we price work on it.
Outside the historic core the town is more ordinary: Victorian and Edwardian brick, interwar and post-war semis, and modern estate development out towards Shottery, Tiddington and Bishopton. Those are conventional jobs and the majority of what we do here.
The villages, Wilmcote, Snitterfield, Welford-on-Avon, Alveston and the rest, are a mixture of timber frame, brick and stone with their own conservation areas, and each needs its own answer rather than one borrowed from the town.
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 Stratford-upon-Avon street to the next.
Stratford-on-Avon District Council is the local planning authority. The council is currently preparing updated conservation area appraisals and management plans for eight conservation areas, including Stratford-on-Avon itself, with formal consultation planned during 2026, so the policy position here is actively being reviewed rather than settled.
With over 3,300 listed buildings and structures in the district, the odds of a job here involving one are higher than anywhere else we work. Listing covers the entire building, inside and out, and it can extend to walls, outbuildings and structures within the curtilage. Listed building consent is separate from planning permission, and carrying out work without it is a criminal offence rather than a paperwork failure. We ask about listing on the first visit and we check rather than take anybody’s word for it.
The council’s Core Strategy includes Policy CS.4 on the water environment and flood risk, supported by published technical evidence. What that means practically is that for some sites a flood risk assessment forms part of an application, and the design itself may need to respond to it. The place to check a specific address is the Environment Agency flood map together with the council’s evidence base, and it is worth doing at the outset rather than after a design is paid for.
On the unlisted, undesignated housing the ordinary rules apply and a single storey rear extension often falls within permitted development. 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.
Stratford-on-Avon District Council decides your planning application, but Warwickshire County Council is the highway authority, so a skip standing on a public road here 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. A £97 administration and inspection fee applies and the skip company needs £10m public liability cover.
Stratford’s historic core carries a great deal of foot traffic, and that is a genuine working constraint rather than an inconvenience. Deliveries, scaffold and skips all have to work around pedestrians in numbers, and early starts are frequently the only sensible window. We plan around it instead of pretending it is a normal street.
Out through Shottery, Tiddington and the surrounding villages a driveway is usually available, no licence is needed, and both the fee and about a week of lead time come out of the job. Village lanes are narrow, so we size deliveries to what can actually get down them.
We also work across Warwick, Leamington Spa, and Kenilworth.
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.
