Areas We Cover
We build across the West Sussex coastal plain, from Chichester in the west to Littlehampton in the east, plus the villages threaded between them. The unit is at Middleton Business Park on Yapton Road, Middleton-on-Sea, which puts almost all of that within a short run rather than a day out.
Two things shift as you move along the coast: who decides your application, and what the ground and the weather do to the design. Both are cheaper to know about early.
Chichester
The western end of the patch, and the only place where the council changes. Chichester District Council is a strict authority, particularly in the conservation and Article 4 ring around the centre, and the timescales reflect that. The city itself splits neatly in two — period stock inside the walls that buys internal work and repair, and the 1930s to 1960s suburbs past the ring road that buy extensions and lofts. Parking permits and skip permits are real budget lines here, and towards the canal basin the ground gets wet and gravelly enough to change the foundation design.
Read about the work we do in Chichester.
Bognor Regis
The town we are in most weeks, and the closest to base. Bungalows dominate the enquiries: dormers, hip-to-gable conversions, back walls coming out. Access is easy compared with anywhere else on this list, which genuinely saves money, and Arun District Council is pragmatic about ordinary householder work. What the coast costs you is specification — stainless, marine silicones, render that will take wind-driven rain — and sometimes foundation depth, particularly out towards Pagham and North Bersted.
Read about builders in Bognor Regis.
Arundel
A steep, historic, tightly parked town where the logistics cost as much as the trade. Chalk underfoot means stepped footings, retaining and split-level slabs; the lanes mean small plant and hand-carrying. There is a conservation overlay across the town and a great many listed buildings within it. Which authority determines an application depends on the address, so that gets established at the start rather than assumed.
Read about the work we do in Arundel.
Felpham
Two worlds a mile apart: gated beach estates where the houses are large and the estate association has rules of its own, and post-war suburbs where the jobs are garages, bungalow extensions and kitchens. Arun District Council decides both. On the estates, the covenants and the design committee have to be cleared alongside the planning application, and delivery restrictions get priced into the tender.
Read about builders in Felpham.
The villages
Short entries on purpose. Where nothing specific is published about a place, we would rather say one true thing than four invented ones.
Aldwick. Arun District Council. Craigweil House here carries the only two conservation-area Article 4 Directions Arun publishes anywhere in the district, so this is the one local address where heritage designation has genuinely stripped permitted development rights. The larger Victorian and Edwardian villas along this edge are often flats now, which brings freeholder consent into the job as well as the council.
Pagham. Arun District Council. The Environment Agency's warning area here is coastal rather than fluvial — it covers the coastal areas of Pagham. Arun applies extra scrutiny at Pagham Beach Estate because of the coastal processes there, adopted an interim development framework for it in October 2021, and has been looking at a Coastal Change Management Area. The council also states plainly that neither it nor the Environment Agency has a duty to protect the coast from erosion or flooding. Ground towards here tends to be silt and marine clay.
Middleton-on-Sea. Arun District Council, and where our unit is. Elmer, at the eastern end of the parish, gives its name to the Environment Agency's coastal alert frontage — Selsey Bill to Elmer.
North Bersted. Arun District Council, with a conservation area of its own on the council's published list. Worth checking whether an address falls inside it before assuming a dormer is permitted development, because inside a designation it is not. Foundations round here can want extra depth or land drainage.
South Bersted. Arun District Council. In practice part of Bognor Regis, and priced and programmed as a Bognor job.
Rose Green. Arun District Council, west of Bognor on the coastal plain. Nothing distinctive is published about it, so what decides a price here is what the trial hole shows and how exposed the elevation is.
Nyetimber. Arun District Council, within Pagham parish, so the coastal change position above is the backdrop for anything near the frontage.
Elmer. Arun District Council, at the eastern end of the Middleton-on-Sea parish. The flood regime along this frontage is coastal and tidal rather than a river one.
Yapton. Arun District Council. The conservation area covers Main Road and Church Lane. Yapton Road is the road our own unit stands on, so this is the village we drive through most.
Barnham. Arun District Council, with a conservation area at Church Lane.
Eastergate. Arun District Council. Its conservation area takes in Church Lane and the Square.
Westergate. Arun District Council, running straight into Eastergate. If an address sits near that Church Lane and Square boundary, confirm which side of the line it falls before assuming any permitted development right.
Walberton. Arun District Council, with a conservation area covering the village and the green. Arun published draft character appraisals for Walberton Village and Walberton Green in 2021, so unlike most places around here there is a document to read before designing.
Climping. Arun District Council for planning and for building control. We publish no flood zone for anywhere, here included — that mapping is drawn plot by plot. Put the postcode through the Environment Agency's checker at check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk and send us what it says.
Littlehampton. Arun District Council, with three conservation areas — East Street, River Road and the seafront. The Environment Agency also runs a tidal alert area over Rope Walk, Ferry Road and Bridge Road on the west bank of the lower Arun, so a heritage question and a tidal one can turn up on the same street.
Rustington. Arun District Council, and one of the twenty-nine conservation areas the district publishes, so the older core carries the usual extra scrutiny on windows, roofs and anything visible from the street. Rustington also has a parish council with its own planning committee, which comments on applications before Arun decides them — worth a week in your programme if your job needs permission.
Somewhere not listed? Ask. If it is too far out to run the job properly, James will say so rather than take it on and arrive late.
Twenty miles, and the price is the same across all of it
James is happy to work to roughly twenty miles of Bognor Regis. That circle takes in every town and village named above, and a good way past the ones at the edge of the list.
Being further out does not make your job dearer. A bathroom in Walberton is quoted on the same rates as a bathroom in Middleton-on-Sea, and there is no travel loading buried in the labour. What moves a price is access, what the trial hole turns up and the specification you pick — none of which has the first thing to do with your distance from our unit.
We have done small jobs across most of these villages over the years. None of them is written up here, because none of them is a project we can properly evidence with photographs and an owner's permission, and a coverage page is not a portfolio.
We do travel for the right job
Church Farm Cottage is in Petersfield, in Hampshire, roughly 25 miles beyond the patch we work in every week. We took it because it was the right project — main contractor for the whole job, 120m² of Egyptian sandstone around a new pool, and a pool house with it. We would go that far again for work of that kind. See landscaping and outdoor living and the Church Farm Cottage project in Petersfield.
Petersfield is not a covered area, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Everything above is.
What does not change, wherever you are
Exposure to wind-driven rain is graded under BS 8104, and a wall facing the Channel is not the same design problem as one four miles inland, so we check the exposure category instead of assuming it. High groundwater turns up often enough across this plain that a trial hole is the sensible answer. Neither of those justifies a vague price. They are the reason for a specific one.
The service is the same in every one of these places: loft conversions, our house extensions service, kitchen fitting, carpentry and bespoke joinery, bathroom fitting and wet rooms and building works and renovations. Previous projects shows what that looks like finished.
All workmanship guaranteed for 24 months from completion. Manufacturer warranties on all materials and installed products passed to you in full — many run to 10 years or more. Structural work is signed off by Building Control and covered by our £2m public liability insurance. We're working towards an insurance-backed guarantee scheme and will offer it as soon as we're eligible.
Give us the postcode and the idea, and you get a date for a free visit. Call 07470 078236, message on WhatsApp, or book a free site visit. James has been building here since 2002. Over 100 projects and rated 5 stars on Yell. Employers' liability and £2m public liability. Company No. 16870716.