Price Guide — What Building Work Costs in Bognor Regis

Almost nobody in this trade publishes prices. We do, because the alternative is three builders giving you three numbers with nothing behind them and no way to compare.

There are forty figures on this page. The whole-house numbers come first — refurbishments, large extensions, garage conversions — and then the trades in this order: lofts, kitchens, bathrooms, roofing, structural work, garden rooms, landscaping and driveways, carpentry. Go straight to your own job. One item on the list has no number against it at all, and the reason is given where it sits.

Revised August 2026. Every price on this page includes VAT at 20%. Planning, Building Control and professional fees are not in any band and are stated separately on every quotation.

Jump to: whole-house work · lofts · kitchens · bathrooms · roofing · structural · garden rooms · landscaping and drives · carpentry · what is in the price · how you pay

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Read this before you read the numbers

Prices include VAT. Add 20% to work out what leaves your account. A homeowner cannot reclaim VAT, so the figure you read here is the figure that leaves your account. Every quotation we issue shows the VAT as a separate line and the total with it included, so the two always agree.

These are ranges, not quotes. The same brief on two different houses is two different jobs. Ground, access, what survives when we open up, and how much glass you want will move a figure by tens of thousands of pounds.

We publish no minimum project value. Some jobs on this list are half a day's work; the largest run for months.

Nothing here is a claim about a job we have finished. The bands are what we would quote. Where a figure comes from a real project it is labelled as such and the project is named.

Where a band is wide, the page says why. A range that runs from £960 to £5,760 looks like a builder hedging. It usually means two different products have been given one name, and that is worth explaining rather than hiding.

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The whole-house numbers

These four come from James's own pricing rather than from any published guide, and they are the ones to start with if your job is a large one.

All prices include VAT at 20%.

On the refurbishment band. The plus sign is real, and here is what sits behind it. One client in Chichester is the clearest example. A dormer loft conversion came first. Then, phase by phase, the same client had every internal door swapped for oak fire doors, the ceilings below re-plastered, an extension running the whole width of the back of the house, decking outside, a new fuse board, luxury vinyl tile through the entire ground floor and the fencing replaced. Roughly 20 weeks of work in total, and around £132,000 inc. VAT as contracted. That is what the plus sign is for: at some point a refurbishment stops being a refurbishment and becomes a rolling programme. See the Whyke Close loft conversion in Chichester.

On the extension band. The bottom of it is a straightforward rectangle on decent ground with a flat roof, standard windows and a plastered finish. The top is a heavily glazed room with a structural opening across the back of the house, underfloor heating and a lantern or two. Both are large single-storey extensions and there is £44,400 between them, which is why we will not quote one over the phone.

On the garage conversion band. Structurally this is usually the simplest job on the page. What makes it expensive is the floor, the damp-proofing and the fact that the old up-and-over opening has to become a proper insulated wall with a window in it that looks like it was always there. More at garage conversions.

Have drawings already? Send them over and you get a fully itemised quotation back rather than a single figure. Over 100 projects completed. Insured to £2m.

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A real cost per square metre, and what it does and does not mean

We are building a 50m² rear extension at 29 Victoria Road in Bognor Regis. The contract is £120,000 inc. VAT. Across 50m² that works out at £2,400 per m² inc. VAT — the bottom of the £2,400 to £3,600 band above, not the middle of it.

That is worth saying plainly, because it is the opposite of what a price guide usually does. A well-specified extension, priced by us, landed on the cheapest square-metre rate we publish. The band goes higher because specification, not floor area, is what moves it. Two extensions of the same size can sit tens of thousands of pounds apart once the glazing, the roof and the floor finish are chosen. Anybody quoting a rate per square metre before asking what you want in it is guessing.

Read what the Victoria Road rate buys before you apply it to your own house. It pays for bifolds, replacement windows and a new back door; the wall between old and new taken out completely; tiling right across the ground floor with underfloor heating beneath it; LED lighting to a high specification; a boiler housed in its own structure off the side of the property; and two lanterns set into a fibreglass roof. Swap the underfloor heating for radiators, the fibreglass for felt and the lanterns for nothing, and the rate falls. Put the same footprint on a sloping plot with bad ground and it rises.

So: a benchmark for a well-specified extension, not a rate card. Read the job in full at the Victoria Road extension, or see our house extensions service.

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One more real figure — and one we refuse to turn into a rate

At Church Farm Cottage in Petersfield we were main contractor for the whole project and laid 120m² of Egyptian sandstone around a new swimming pool, with a pool house alongside it. The stone, and the works that went with it, came to roughly £60,000 inc. VAT over about 12 weeks. Access to the site was dreadful and had to be worked around, which is a cost in itself.

We are not going to divide £50,000 by 120 and call it a paving rate. The figure covers associated works as well as the stone, so the arithmetic would produce a number that looks precise and means nothing. There is a proper sandstone rate further down this page, worked out per square metre for the paving alone, and that is the one to use. See the Church Farm Cottage project in Petersfield and landscaping and outdoor living.

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Loft conversions

All prices include VAT at 20%.

Three things decide where you land in these bands, and none of them is the size of the room.

What the roof is made of. A traditional cut roof has space in it already and the timbers can usually be worked around. A trussed roof, which is most houses built since the 1970s, has a web of bracing through the middle that is holding the roof up. All of it has to come out and be replaced with a new structure before you have a room at all. That is the single biggest swing in the rooflight band.

Where the stairs land. A loft stair has to arrive somewhere sensible and it has to satisfy Approved Document K, which sets 2m of headroom over a stair, relaxed to 1.9m at the centre and 1.8m at the edge for a loft conversion. What Approved Document K does not set is a minimum room height. That distinction is why the Chichester loft worked: the ceilings through the house came down and went back lower, not to meet a legal minimum, but to make the rooms and the stair work. Most builders would have said no to that job.

Whether you need planning permission. A rear dormer on an ordinary house is usually permitted development — the Chichester loft was, and no application was made. Inside a conservation area it is not. Conservation areas are article 2(3) land under the GPDO, Class B does not apply there, and that means any dormer in a conservation area needs planning permission. That is a fee, a wait and a design conversation, and it is the reason two identical houses a street apart can be priced differently.

An en-suite adds drainage, which means finding a run down through the house to the existing stack. Where that run is easy it is a day's work. Where it is not, it is a boxed duct through a bedroom and a decision you would rather make before the quotation than after it. More at loft conversions.

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Kitchens

All prices include VAT at 20%.

Whether the sink and the hob stay where they are decides more of this price than the cupboards do. Leave the services alone and a kitchen is joinery, tiling and a worktop template. Move the sink to the other side of the room and you are chasing a waste run through a solid floor, moving the gas, adding circuits and re-plastering three walls. That is the difference between the bottom of the first band and the top of it.

The knock-through band is a different job again, because it is a steel, a Building Control inspection and a kitchen, in that order.

We supply kitchens and we will fit one you have bought. Plenty of people have already stood in a showroom and chosen a kitchen before they ring us, and there is nothing wrong with that. Where we supply, we pass on the trade discount we get. Where you supply, our figure covers the fitting and the work behind it, and the units are yours to argue about with whoever sold them. More at kitchen fitting.

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Bathrooms

All prices include VAT at 20%.

The question that moves a bathroom price is whether the WC stays on the existing soil stack. It is the one fitting that cannot be persuaded very far without cutting a floor about, and moving it is what turns a swap into a refit.

The second question is what you want underfoot. A shower tray sitting on the floor is a tray. A level-access floor is a tanked one, and that means the whole wet area is waterproofed as a system before a single tile goes on. Tanking systems vary and Schlüter is one we use; whichever goes in is a high-quality system with a guarantee behind it, and the guarantee is worth more than the tile choice.

A new en-suite from scratch is priced low in that table because the room is small. What it is not is simple: it is new drainage, usually a stud wall, an extract fan ducted to outside air, and a lighting circuit that has to be right for a bathroom zone. We can supply sanitaryware and we are happy to fit yours. More at bathroom installation.

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Roofing

All prices include VAT at 20%.

The minimum charge on the flat roofs is the honest bit. Every guide online publishes a rate per square metre and stops there. Apply £216 per m² to a 6m² dormer roof and you get £1,296, which would not cover the scaffold, the trims, the two men and the day. Small flat roofs cost what they cost because the work is mostly setting up and detailing, not covering ground. The minimum is there so nobody is surprised.

On a re-roof, the swing is what is under the tiles. If the battens and the felt have gone, they are replaced, and that is a known quantity. If a rafter foot has rotted where the roof meets the wall, it is not, and it appears in the quotation as a provisional sum with the assumption printed next to it. Pitch and access matter too: a roof you can reach off a scaffold on a flat drive is cheaper than the same roof over a conservatory with a neighbour's fence 600mm away.

The scaffold is ours and it is in the price, on this job and on every other one banded above. Nothing about access arrives later as an extra.

We also take emergency call-outs for roofing and insurance make-safe work. That is a different kind of price and it is not banded here — ring and we will tell you. More at roofing work.

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Structural work

All prices include VAT at 20%.

A steel is not priced by its length. It is priced by what is sitting on it, what has to hold the house up while it goes in, and how it gets to where it is going. A 3m beam that two men can carry through a side gate is a different job from the same beam over a full-width opening, where the span is longer, the section is heavier, the padstones are bigger and the thing may have to come in over the roof on a crane or be craned into the garden.

Taking a full-width rear wall out is the band people underestimate most. It is temporary support, a heavy section, fire protection to the steel, making good across a whole elevation, and Building Control at two stages. £9,000 buys the modest version of that on a well-behaved house. £21,600 buys it on a wide opening with awkward loads coming down onto it.

Underpinning has no band, and it is not going to get one. Every underpinning job is priced individually following a site investigation and a structural engineer's design. Any range published before the holes are dug would be wrong, and saying so plainly should make every other number on this page more believable rather than less. More at structural work and steelwork.

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Garden rooms and annexes

All prices include VAT at 20%.

These are builder-built rooms on a proper base, with a real roof and insulation that would satisfy Building Control, not flat-pack pods dropped onto slabs. That is why the bottom of the first band sits where it does.

Adding a WC is what moves a garden room into the second band, and the reason is drainage. A power supply is a cable in a trench. A WC is a drainage run back to the house, a fall you cannot argue with, and a pump if the levels do not work.

The annexe band is the widest thing on this page and we would rather say why than pretend it is precise. A self-contained annexe is a small house: foundations, drainage, a kitchen, a bathroom, heating, its own electrical supply arrangement and, depending on where it goes and what it is for, planning permission. £66,000 and £162,000 are both real prices for things people call an annexe. This is a band that only becomes a number after a site visit. More at garden rooms and annexes.

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Landscaping, patios and drives

All prices include VAT at 20%.

The two resin lines are the same surface over two different jobs. If your existing drive is sound, resin goes over it and you are paying for the surface. If it is not, the whole thing comes up, the spoil goes away, a sub-base goes in and gets compacted, and then you pay for the surface. That is £120 per m² of difference and it is decided under the drive, not on top of it.

Everything in this table assumes we can get to it. A machine that can reach the back garden, and somewhere to stand a grab lorry, is worth more to a landscaping price than any material choice. At Church Farm Cottage the access was dreadful and had to be worked around, and that shaped the programme more than the stone did. On a terraced street where everything comes through the house by barrow, expect the top of the band.

The stone rate covers the paving: the excavation, the sub-base, the laying, the pointing and the edges. It does not cover steps, retaining walls, drainage or lighting, which are priced separately because they vary too much to be spread across a square-metre rate. More at landscaping and outdoor living.

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Carpentry and joinery

All prices include VAT at 20%.

We have our own joinery workshop at Middleton, which is why these are priced as pieces of work rather than as products off a shelf. It also means the material choice moves the money more than the size does.

The alcove band looks silly and it is not. £960 buys painted open shelves in a chimney alcove, made on site, and they will look right. £5,760 buys a full-height unit with sprayed doors, a scribed face frame against a wall that is not straight, and soft-close hardware. They are two different products with one name, and averaging them would tell you nothing about either.

The staircase lines split the same way. A straight softwood flight in a standard rise is a known job. Put a winder in it, or make it in oak, and you are paying for setting out, for material that punishes a mistake, and for a finish that will be looked at every day for thirty years.

Sash windows are usually repaired in our own workshop, and sometimes alongside a specialist subcontractor where the job calls for it. They are priced per window after we have looked at them, because a sash that needs new beads and a cord is not the same as one with a rotten sill.

We also supply and hang certified fire doors, and most door installations are done under Building Control supervision. More at our carpentry and joinery.

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What is in the price, and what is not

Inside our figure

• Scaffolding and access equipment. Ours, in our price, from the day it goes up to the day it comes down
• Labour, materials and plant
• Setting out, protection of the parts of your house we are not touching, and temporary services where they are needed
• Liaison with Building Control and attendance at every inspection
• Decorating, where it is written into the quotation
• Making good, a final clean, and the handover file
• Skips and waste removal, itemised as their own lines

Outside it

These are the costs that catch people out, so they are printed rather than buried:

• Structural engineer's calculations
• Building Control application and inspections
• Planning application, where one is needed
• Party wall surveyor, where one is needed
• Decorating, unless it is written into the quotation
• Kitchen units, sanitaryware and floor coverings, where you are choosing them

On the party wall. Where a surveyor is needed, you serve the notice and you pay the surveyor. We will walk you through the process, tell you when the notice has to go out and what happens if your neighbour does not reply, but the appointment is yours to make.

On ground conditions. Foundations are priced against an assumed depth and the assumption is printed in the quotation. Once the trial holes are dug the actual depth is measured and the figure moves to match it, up or down. High groundwater is common on the coastal plain and is one of the things trial holes are for.

Statutory fees

Planning fees and Building Control fees are paid directly by you to the council. They do not come to us and they do not go through us. We are not publishing an amount for either, because councils change them and a stale figure on a website is worse than no figure — check the current fee with Arun District Council or Chichester District Council, whichever covers your address, and we will tell you which applications your job actually needs.

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How you pay

• A 5% deposit as standard. It varies job to job, but 5% is the norm. It covers the first materials order and holds your slot in the programme
• Fortnightly valuations. Every two weeks we produce a simple valuation of the work completed on site, and you pay against that
• 5% retention, released at practical completion. Held back until the job is genuinely finished, not nearly finished

Why fortnightly is better for you, not just for us. Under a three-stage system you hand over a large sum against a milestone with a name — "first fix complete" — and have to take somebody's word for what that meant. A fortnightly valuation is a list of what was actually done in those two weeks, measured against the quotation you already hold. You can walk the job with it in your hand. If a fortnight was slow, the valuation is small and you pay less. Nobody ends up a month's money ahead of the work, in either direction, and that is exactly the situation where jobs go wrong.

Variations are agreed before they happen. If you want something changed, we talk about it, we put the price in writing, and the extra is paid before the work is done. Nobody discovers a variation on the final account.

Snagging. At the end you get a couple of days to walk the job and compile your list, and that list is cleared before the final payment. If something major surfaces after that window has closed, we come back anyway.

The contract. Yours is written for your job rather than pulled off a shelf, because a bathroom and a back-to-brick renovation are not the same undertaking. It binds us as firmly as it binds you, and you have it before anybody starts.

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The quotation is the real differentiator

The prices above are a guide. What you actually buy from us is the document.

A Swanbourne quotation runs to over two hundred itemised lines. Every assumption is written down. Every exclusion is written down. Where something cannot be measured until a wall is opened, it appears as a provisional sum with the assumption printed next to it, so you can see what it is a placeholder for.

That matters when you are comparing. Three quotations at £84,000, £78,000 and £71,000, all including VAT, tell you nothing until you know which of them includes the scaffold, which assumes 900mm foundations, and which quietly leaves out making good. Ours tells you. No builder we compete with locally produces documentation to this standard, and it is the single most useful thing we hand a customer before any work starts.

See our quotation process, or send us your drawings and we will show you rather than describe it. Rated 5 stars on Yell. Company No. 16870716.

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The guarantee

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.

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Printing this, and when it was written

There is a plain, printer-friendly version of this guide at the printable price guide — no navigation, no images, something you can put on the table next to two other builders' quotations.

Revised: August 2026. Prices are reviewed every six months. The next review is due in January 2027, and sooner if material costs move sharply. If you are reading this well after that date, ring and check rather than assume.

More at questions homeowners ask us, or for whole-house work see building works and renovations.

Book a free site visit — no charge, no obligation, and you get a written answer either way. Call James on 07470 078236, send a WhatsApp, or book a free site visit.

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.