These are the questions that come up before anyone has decided what they want built. Questions about a specific trade sit on the service pages — loft conversions, our house extensions service, building works and renovations, kitchen fitting, bathroom installation and our carpentry and joinery each have their own.
Jump to: permission and paperwork · money · during the work · what we supply and who signs it off · still not answered
Permission and paperwork
Do I need planning permission, or is this permitted development?
Permitted development is a national grant of permission that already exists — you are not asking, you are checking that you qualify. Most single-storey rear extensions and most loft conversions on ordinary houses do.
You fall out of it for one of three reasons. The work is too big. The house has already used its allowance up, because the limits are measured from the original dwelling as first built, not from the house you bought. Or the land is designated, which switches large parts of permitted development off entirely.
If it is close, apply for a Lawful Development Certificate. It is not planning permission — it is the council confirming in writing that you did not need any. When you sell, the buyer's solicitor will ask for it.
Which council will I be dealing with?
Arun District Council covers Bognor Regis, Felpham, Aldwick, Pagham, Middleton-on-Sea, Yapton, Barnham, Eastergate, Walberton, Climping and Littlehampton.
Chichester District Council covers Chichester city and the district outside the South Downs National Park. The Chichester Local Plan 2021–2039 was adopted on 19 August 2025.
Arundel is split. The northern part of the parish sits in the South Downs National Park, and the town itself is administered by Arun District Council. Where a site is inside the Park, the South Downs National Park Authority is the planning authority, though Chichester District Council processes most applications there under an agency arrangement. The Authority's own boundary map warns that the line it shows is only an approximation, so a site anywhere near it gets checked with the Authority rather than guessed at.
Building control is simpler: in Arun district it is Arun District Council everywhere, including inside the National Park.
More on where we work: the areas we cover.
Is building control the same thing as planning permission?
No, and confusing the two is the single most common mistake we see.
Planning is about whether the thing may exist — size, appearance, effect on neighbours. Building control is about whether it is safely and properly built. You can have planning permission and still fail building control, and plenty of work needs building control with no planning application at all.
They also run on different clocks. Arun District Council acknowledges an application inside three working days and publishes a target of three weeks for appraising nine out of ten full plans submissions, with everything falling inside the statutory five. Chichester District Council runs its service split between the north and the south of the district, and lets you start work two days after a Full Plans Application or a Building Notice goes in.
We use Full Plans rather than a Building Notice on anything structural. It costs a little more time at the front and means the details are agreed before anything is cut.
I live in a conservation area. What actually changes?
More than most people expect, and less than they fear. A conservation area is designated under section 69 of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990, and it makes your land what the permitted development order calls article 2(3) land. That switches specific things off:
- Any dormer or roof enlargement needs planning permission. On article 2(3) land the whole of Class B falls away. This is the one that catches people, and the South Downs National Park counts too.
- Side extensions and rear extensions of more than one storey need permission.
- Cladding the outside of the house needs permission.
- The larger home extension scheme is not available — no 6m or 8m rear extension under prior approval.
- Demolition needs permission, including walls and other structures.
- Trees: six weeks' written notice to the council before cutting down, topping or lopping.
What does not change: a single-storey rear extension within the standard depths is still permitted development, subject to every other limit.
By town: loft conversions in Chichester and loft conversions in Arundel go into what that means locally.
Does being in a conservation area mean I cannot replace my windows?
No. This is worth being precise about, because a lot of what is said about it is wrong.
Conservation area status does not automatically catch windows and doors. It takes an Article 4 Direction — a separate, specific decision by the council — to remove permitted development rights for them, and those directions are published.
Locally, we have checked. In the conservation areas at Arundel, at Bognor Regis and at Felpham, no Article 4 Direction takes householder permitted development rights away. Not one. Arun District Council publishes a single direction for the whole district: MA294, dating from January 2023 and covering three wards — River, Hotham and Marine. Its entire effect is to stop a house being turned into an HMO. Beyond that, the only conservation-area directions Arun publishes sit at Craigweil House in Aldwick. Chichester's own city direction dates from 21 March 2018 and was confirmed that September. It reaches solar equipment fitted to a roof slope that faces a highway, an open space or a waterway. That is its whole scope; extensions, roofs and windows are untouched by it.
A listed building is different. There, replacing windows does need listed building consent.
Directions can be made at any time, so we check the address rather than rely on this page being current forever.
My house is listed. What does that mean in practice?
It means far more than the front elevation. Arun District Council puts it about as plainly as a council can: everything counts, basement to chimney pots, interior as much as exterior — and so does the curtilage, the land around the building. Outbuildings and boundary walls can be caught even where they carry no listing of their own.
Anything capable of affecting the building's character needs consent before it happens, and internal work counts. Anyone who thinks "it is only the inside, so it does not matter" is wrong.
Get this wrong and it is not a paperwork problem, it is a criminal one. Unauthorised work carries a fine with no upper limit, or two years in prison, and the builder can be liable alongside the owner. Allow around eight weeks for a Grade II application, longer for Grade I or II*. And listed building consent sits alongside planning permission rather than replacing it — some jobs need one, some need the other, some need both.
One piece of relief is real. Approved Document L accepts that full compliance with the energy efficiency requirements is not demanded of a listed building, or one in a conservation area, where meeting them would unacceptably alter its character or appearance. What it does demand is compliance as far as is reasonably practicable.
We do not hold a heritage accreditation and we are not going to sell you one. What we will do is tell you before anything starts where consent is needed, and say plainly when a job wants a conservation specialist working alongside us.
Where does the "2.2 metre" ceiling height rule come from?
From builders, not from Parliament. There is no minimum room height anywhere in Approved Document K. None at all.
What the document does set is two metres of headroom over stairs and landings — and in a loft conversion that figure is allowed to drop, to 1.9m measured across the middle of the stair, easing to 1.8m at the side, where space will not allow more. That is the number that decides whether a loft works, and it is lower than the one everybody quotes.
2.2m survives because it is a decent rule of thumb for how the finished room will feel after the build-up has eaten into it — new floor, insulation above and below, boarding and skim. Useful. Not law. We have converted a loft that failed the rule of thumb by lowering the ceilings below it — see which lofts cannot be converted.
When do I have to give my neighbours notice?
When the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies, which is more often than people think. Three separate triggers, three different notice periods:
| What you are doing | Notice |
|---|---|
| Building on the boundary line between two properties | at least 1 month |
| Work to an existing party wall or party structure | at least 2 months |
| Excavating near a neighbour's building | at least 1 month |
The whole subject, including what the notice has to say and who pays for the surveyor, is set out in telling your neighbours about a loft conversion.
Two separate rules cover excavation. The first bites within 3 metres of any part of next door's building, where you are digging deeper than their footings. The second reaches out to 6 metres, and catches you wherever a line drawn down at 45 degrees from the underside of their foundations passes through your hole.
Two things builders get wrong. A single-storey rear extension on a semi frequently triggers both the party structure notice and the excavation notice, so the two-month clock is the one that matters. And silence is not consent. The reply has to come back in writing inside 14 days; where it does not, the Act treats a dispute as having arisen, and surveyors then have to be appointed.
None of this is connected to planning permission or building control. Having both does not excuse you from serving notice. Start the two-month clock at the same time as everything else: see telling your neighbours about a loft conversion.
Who serves the party wall notice, and who pays the surveyor?
You do, on both counts. The Act makes it the building owner's notice, and the surveyor's fee lands with the person doing the building — that is how the legislation is written, and it is not something a builder can absorb for you.
What we do is get you to it early and stand beside you through it: whether your job triggers the Act at all, which of the three notices you need, the date the clock has to start, and what happens if the neighbour does not reply. Then we build to the award. The reason this sits on the website rather than coming up in week two is that the two-month notice period is the single most common cause of a start date moving.
Do I need an architect?
Not always. For a straightforward extension or loft conversion within permitted development you need a measured set of drawings and structural calculations, and those can come from a technician and an engineer rather than an architect.
Where an architect earns the fee is a planning application in a sensitive setting, an awkward site, or a whole-house rearrangement where the value is in the layout rather than the construction. Already have drawings? Send them over. What comes back is a priced document, not an estimate written on the bottom of your plan.
Money
Do I pay VAT, and are the prices on here before it or after it?
You pay it, and every figure you read on this site is shown before it. Swanbourne Construction Ltd is VAT registered and the standard 20% rate applies to ordinary domestic building work. Every price on this website, every band in our price guide and every quotation we send you is shown including VAT, so the figure you read is the figure that leaves your account; the quotation also sets the VAT out on its own line so you can see it. Those figures assume standard-rate VAT; some work, such as certain adaptations for disabled people, can be charged differently, and we will say so on the quotation. A builder who is not VAT registered adds no VAT at all, so his total is not directly comparable with ours and the specification is what you have to weigh instead. And a quotation that does not say whether VAT is in it is one to ring up about before you put it next to anything else.
VAT law does contain reduced-rate categories for certain conversions and long-term empty properties. We are not going to guess whether yours qualifies. If you think it might, say so early and we will get it confirmed before the quotation is priced, because it is not something to discover afterwards.
How do I pay, and when?
First, the bit before any of it: the site visit is free, and so is the quotation that follows — including the ones where the answer turns out to be that the job is not worth doing. Every enquiry gets a reply inside one working day.
After that: a 5% deposit as standard, fortnightly valuations of the work completed, and 5% retention released at practical completion. The deposit moves a little depending on the job, and whatever it is for yours is written down before you agree to anything.
All of it sits in a written contract drawn up for your job specifically, because no two of these jobs are alike and a standard form would not describe yours properly. It binds us as much as it binds you.
Why fortnightly rather than three big stage payments: every two weeks you get a short document setting out what has been built since the last one, priced off the quotation already in your hands. You can stand in the middle of the job and check it line by line. Neither side gets far ahead of the other, which is the situation that turns a job sour. The full arrangement is set out in our price guide.
Statutory fees are not part of any of that. The Building Control application and inspections, the structural engineer, the planning fee where a job needs one and the party wall surveyor where one is appointed are all paid by you, direct. Scaffolding, on the other hand, is inside our price. Councils change their fees, so ask yours what the current one is rather than trusting a figure on anybody's website.
What if the ground turns out to be worse than expected — who pays?
This is what trial holes and provisional sums are for, and it is worth understanding before you sign anything.
The ground under the coastal plain is not uniform. Typically there is a metre or two of brickearth at the surface — the British Geological Survey describes it as a structureless silt — then raised beach sand and gravel, then London Clay beneath that. Buried clifflines cut through the lot, and BGS records the superficial deposits changing markedly where they do. Put plainly: what you find at one end of a garden need not be what you find at the other. North of Chichester on the chalk the risk is a different one — solution features, where the chalk has dissolved out and left clay-filled pipes, and BGS is blunt about the consequence of building across one, which is differential subsidence. In the Arun valley the alluvium is typically 8 to 12 metres thick. And high groundwater is common on the coastal plain — another thing trial holes are for.
Where shrinkable clay and trees are both in play, NHBC minimum foundation depths run from 1.0m to 1.5m depending on the soil's plasticity, not the 900mm people assume.
So: where the ground is an unknown, the foundations go into the quotation as a provisional sum, with the depth we have assumed stated on the line so you can see what the allowance is buying. We dig, you see what came out of the hole, and the figure is remeasured before any concrete is poured. You are never asked to approve a cost you have not seen.
Flooding is separate and site-specific. A flood zone is mapped plot by plot, so no honest answer can be given for a whole town — check your own postcode on the Environment Agency's service at check-for-flooding.service.gov.uk. Worth knowing for context: at Arundel the Environment Agency operates both a river flood warning area for the town and a separate tidal alert area for River Road near the wharf, while the Bognor, Pagham and Elmer frontage is covered by a coastal alert area running from Selsey Bill to Elmer.
Is there a minimum size of job you will take?
No, and we do not publish one. Some of the work here runs for months; some of it is a fortnight. What decides whether we can help is usually the calendar rather than the value — a small job that fits between two larger ones is easy, and the same job in a booked-solid month is not. Ring and ask.
During the work
How long does the whole thing take?
Longer than the building, because of the consents. Three clocks run before anyone arrives on site, and the mistake is starting them one after another.
Planning, where it is needed. Building control, which Arun targets at three weeks for most full plans submissions and which Chichester allows you to start against after two days. And party wall, where a notice about a party structure needs at least two months' warning. Start all three together and the delay is the longest one, not the sum of them.
For on-site duration, two real examples. Church Farm Cottage in Petersfield ran about 12 weeks. Whyke Close in Chichester ran roughly 20 weeks, but that covered a loft conversion plus six later phases of work, so it is not a guide to a single job. We are not going to invent a figure for your job — you get a programme with your quotation.
Can I live in the house while you work?
Usually. It depends entirely on whether the work takes out water, heating or a safe floor, and for how long. A loft conversion is worked through the scaffold with the ceiling below sealed. An extension keeps the knock-through back until the new structure is watertight. A back-to-brick renovation is different and we will tell you so at the site visit rather than at week three.
How are changes handled once you have started?
We talk it through, then it goes to you in writing with a price on it, and the extra work is paid for before it is carried out. That last part is stated here rather than at the kitchen table because it is easier to read it now than to be told it by somebody standing in your hallway. It is in the contract, it applies to changes you ask for and to changes the building forces on us, and it means the extras are settled as they happen instead of piling up into an argument at the end.
If we open something up and find a problem, you see the photograph and the figure before we carry on. That is what the quotation's 200-plus itemised lines are for: a variation you can price against something is a variation you can push back on. See how we run a job.
What happens at the very end, and how long do I get to find faults?
We walk round with you and you write down everything you can find. You then have a couple of days to close the list out, and the last payment follows it. Short on purpose — snagging that drags on for a month is a job neither side ever gets to put down.
But a couple of days is not us shutting the door. If something significant was missed in that window, we come back and put it right regardless. Nobody spots a leak that only shows up in the first gale, and you have not signed that away by not spotting it. The 24-month workmanship guarantee starts at completion and is what stands behind that.
Who clears up, and where does the waste go?
We do, and it goes off site properly.
We hold a duty of care over everything that leaves your property, so it goes to a licensed tip with a waste transfer note behind it rather than into the back of somebody's van. Skips and waste removal are set out as their own lines in the quotation, so you can see whether they are in your figure rather than assuming it either way. Scaffolding, for what it is worth, always is. The parts of your house we are not working on get protected before anything starts, not after the first bit of damage. There is a proper clean at the end rather than a broom pushed round, and you get a handover file with the certificates, the guarantees and the manufacturer warranties in it.
The honest bit: dust travels further than anyone expects, however well a job is sheeted. If you have anything you would hate to lose, move it out of the house rather than into the next room.
Do you do the work yourselves, or subcontract it?
Both, and which is which is written into the quotation.
Our own team does the building work — structure, brickwork, carpentry, first and second fix — and we have our own joinery workshop at Middleton, so a good deal of what gets fitted in your house is made a few miles from it. Specialist trades come in where a specialist is the right answer, and we manage them rather than leaving you to. Petersfield is the clearest example: we held the main contract for that whole project, ran every subcontracted trade on it, and worked on the pool build itself including its lighting. See the Church Farm Cottage project in Petersfield.
Whichever it is, James is your single point of contact for the whole job, and he is the principal contractor under the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 — the person the law makes responsible for how the site is run. You do not chase five different numbers.
Are you insured, and what does that actually cover?
We carry £2m public liability insurance and employers' liability insurance, and structural work is signed off by Building Control. Swanbourne Construction Ltd is Company No. 16870716. Ask to see the certificates before you commit — any builder who is insured will produce them, and any builder who hesitates has told you something.
The honest distinction, because this trips people up: public liability covers damage and injury caused by our work. It is not a structural warranty and it is not the same thing as an insurance-backed guarantee — that is a separate scheme, and we are working towards it. Anyone who tells you their public liability policy is a ten-year guarantee is selling you something that does not exist.
What is actually guaranteed?
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.
Questions about what we supply and who signs it off
Can I buy my own kitchen and have you fit it?
Yes. We supply kitchens, and we are just as happy to fit one you have bought yourself. Most people have fallen for a particular range long before they ring a builder, and there is nothing to be gained by talking them out of it.
Where we do supply, the trade discount we get is passed on to you wherever we are able to. Tell us which way round you want it at the site visit, because it changes the shape of the quotation: a kitchen we supply is priced as goods and fitting together, and a kitchen you supply is priced as fitting alone, with the delivery date yours to hold. Detail at kitchen fitting.
Can I choose my own bath, basin and taps?
Same answer. We can supply sanitaryware, with the trade discount passed on where it is available to us, or fit what you have already chosen and paid for.
The part worth asking about is underneath. Tanking is where bathrooms fail years later, so whichever system goes into yours is a proper high-quality one with a guarantee behind it — Schlüter is one we use. Which system suits depends on the room, the substrate and whether the floor is being levelled. It is written into the quotation by name rather than left as "waterproofing". More at bathroom installation.
Do you make your own joinery?
We have our own joinery workshop at Middleton, which is why the carpentry on our jobs is not held hostage by a supplier's lead time.
Sash windows are usually repaired there. On some jobs a specialist subcontractor does them instead, depending on what the sashes need, and you will be told which before the work starts rather than after. See our carpentry and joinery.
Who signs off the electrics, the gas and the plumbing?
Electrical work is signed off in accordance with the current regulations, and gas and plumbing work is signed off by registered installers. The certificates go into your handover file.
That file is not paperwork for its own sake. It is what a buyer's surveyor asks for, what an insurer asks for after a fire, and what the next contractor needs before he touches anything you have had done.
Can you supply and hang fire doors?
Yes. We supply and hang certified fire doors, and most of the door installations we carry out are done under Building Control supervision, which is the check that actually bites — a certified door hung badly is not a fire door.
Being straight about the limit of that: we do not hold a third-party installer certification, and we are not going to imply one. If your insurer, your lease or a building's management company requires installation by a certificated firm, say so at the outset, because that is a good reason to use somebody who holds the scheme membership.
Do you come out in an emergency?
Yes — roofing call-outs and make-safe work after storm or escape-of-water damage. That is the tarpaulin over the hole before anybody talks about a claim, and it is usually the difference between a roof repair and a ceiling replacement.
Ring the mobile, 07470 078236. The repair itself is roofing work; if it turns into a claim, insurance reinstatement work explains how those run.
Who does the structural engineering?
Often you already have it. A great many customers arrive with an architect's or technician's drawings and the calculations already done, and we price against them as they stand.
Where you have not got them, the draughtsmen we use work with several engineers between them, and the job goes to whoever suits it. The engineer's fee is paid by you, direct to them, and it is listed as an exclusion on our quotation rather than hidden inside a rate. Openings and beams are covered at structural work and steelwork.
How far do you travel, and does distance cost more?
Roughly 20 miles of Bognor Regis, which takes in Chichester, Arundel, Littlehampton and the villages in between. We have worked further out — Church Farm Cottage in Petersfield is about 25 miles — but 20 miles is the honest working radius rather than a stretch.
Distance does not change the price. Inside that radius the same job costs the same whether you are ten minutes from the yard or forty. Nobody pays a surcharge for living in Arundel. Where we work is set out at the areas we cover.
Still not answered?
Ring James on 07470 078236 and ask. If the answer is that your job is not worth doing, you will be told that too.
Book a free site visit, send us your drawings, or send a WhatsApp. More than 100 projects behind us, rated 5 stars on Yell, and a reply inside one working day.
Prices are at our price guide. Local detail on extensions in Bognor Regis and openings at structural work and steelwork.
Swanbourne Construction Ltd was formed in 2025 to bring James's building work in West Sussex, which goes back to 2008, under one accountable, fully insured limited company.