In Aldwick, a bathroom is often a decision about the next twenty years
Aldwick has one of the oldest populations of any parish we work in. At the 2021 census about 40 per cent of residents were 65 or over, 2,353 people were 75 or over, and 922 said their day-to-day activities were limited a lot. Most Aldwick homes are detached, most are owned outright, and a lot of the people in them intend to stay. That is why so many of our Aldwick bathroom enquiries begin with the shower: getting rid of a bath that has become hard to climb into, or replacing a tray with a step for a floor with none.
That is not the only Aldwick bathroom. The large Bay Estate and Craigweil houses have en-suites and family bathrooms that are simply due a refit, and the 1930s houses on Barrack Lane and Gossamer Lane often have a single bathroom that needs to become two. But level access is the thread that runs through most of the work here.
Bungalows make it straightforward
Barrack Lane, West Meads and Willowhale have a good number of 1960s and 70s bungalows, and a bungalow bathroom is the easiest one to make step-free. There is no stair, no question of which floor the bathroom should be on, and usually space to widen a doorway. The work is in the floor. On a concrete slab the falls to a linear drain are formed in the screed above it, and the door threshold is designed so that a wheelchair or a walking frame rolls straight over. On a suspended timber floor the falls go between the joists. Either way it is a decision made at the survey, not on the day the tiler arrives.
The Disabled Facilities Grant, in the right order
Arun District Council pays Disabled Facilities Grants of up to £30,000, means-tested for adults, and lists wet rooms and walk-in showers among the eligible works. Two things are worth knowing before you ring a builder. First, the process starts with an occupational therapist from West Sussex County Council, through OT Connect on 01243 642121, not with the district council. Second, a grant cannot be approved for work already carried out. If there is any chance the grant applies, we will happily price to the occupational therapist's recommendation, but the recommendation comes first.
Specifying for Aldwick's water
Aldwick is on Portsmouth Water's supply, drawn from the chalk, at around 300 milligrams per litre of hardness on the company's published figures for the Bognor zone. In a bathroom that means scale: on glass, in shower heads, and eventually inside a thermostatic valve. We fit valves whose cartridges can be changed from the front without disturbing tiles, shower heads with rubber nozzles, screens with a factory easy-clean coating, and wet-room drains with a lift-out trap. For an older user we also prefer a thermostatic valve with a built-in maximum temperature stop, which is a scalding safeguard as much as a comfort.
Flats in divided houses, and drains that back up
Some of the large villas along Aldwick's front were divided into flats long ago, and a bathroom in one of those is governed by a lease. Moving a WC or a shower usually needs the freeholder's or managing agent's consent, because the soil stack is shared and the floor is somebody else's ceiling. It is a fortnight at the front of the programme, not a reason not to do it.
On the ground floor there is a different consideration. The Parish Design Statement records that the wastewater and sewage system in Aldwick backs up in heavy rain, and Fish Lane and Aldwick Avenue flooded twice in 2024 after an outfall on the beach blocked. A new ground-floor wet room connected low on the drainage is exactly where a backflow shows up first, so on those runs we fit a non-return valve.
Thatch, listed cottages and the old manor
Aldwick has around eighteen listed buildings, all Grade II, including the seventeenth-century thatched range at 96 and 98 Rose Green Road and Thatched Cottage on Fish Lane. A bathroom in a listed cottage needs listed building consent for anything that touches the historic fabric, and that includes a new extract through a wall or a soil pipe through a floor. We would always rather route the services through later fabric and keep the old untouched.
What it costs
All the bands on our price guide include VAT. A like-for-like swap is £4,800 to £10,800. A full refit is £9,600 to £21,600. A wet room or level-access shower is £8,400 to £21,600, and a new en-suite built from scratch is £7,200 to £18,000. The figure inside each band depends mostly on the floor, the waste route and the tiles you choose.
The wider trade is under bathroom fitting, the town page is bathrooms in Bognor Regis, and the next village west has bathrooms in Pagham. The village is on builders in Aldwick.
Tell us who the bathroom is for and how they use it today, and James will come and look at the floor and the drains before suggesting anything. Ring 07470 078236. Itemised written quotation, two years' guarantee on our work, manufacturers' warranties passed on in full.