Drainage Work in Stratford-upon-Avon, priced in writing before anything starts.
Drainage in the Stratford district is the trade most directly affected by the council’s flood risk policy, and that makes it a design question rather than a detail.
Policy CS.4 in the Core Strategy covers the water environment and flood risk, supported by the council’s published technical evidence. Where an extension increases the area of hard surface or roof draining from a site, the question of where that additional water goes, and how fast, is one the council may take a view on. Discharging it straight into a system that is already under pressure is exactly what the policy exists to prevent.
So on any substantial project here we work out the surface water strategy before the foundations are designed, not after the roof is on. Depending on the site that may be a soakaway, tested rather than assumed, an attenuation solution that holds water and releases it slowly, or a properly consented connection.
In the villages there is a further consideration: a good number of properties are not on a public sewer at all. Where a house drains to a septic tank or a treatment plant, extending or adding bathrooms makes the capacity of that system a live question rather than a background one, and the rules on discharge have tightened in recent years.
Where a run belongs to the water company, building over or close to it needs consent granted before the concrete goes in. Our drainage work page covers surveys, repairs and new connections.
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.
Process, specification and what moves the price are set out on our drainage work page.
The answers that genuinely differ from one Stratford-upon-Avon street to the next.
Every connection is tested before it is covered and recorded on a drawing you keep. On a village property with a private system that record matters, because the location of a drainage field is exactly what nobody can remember when it becomes urgent.
A camera survey before designing over anything turns assumptions into a drawing, and on a historic property with a system that has been altered repeatedly it regularly finds a run nobody knew existed.
Where a run crosses a neighbour’s land, common on village plots, the permissions are agreed before the spade goes in rather than after.
Where flood risk applies to a site, the surface water strategy is agreed before the foundation drawing is finished, because retrofitting attenuation into a completed design is both expensive and awkward.
Part of our wider building work in Stratford-upon-Avon.
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.
