Builders in Southbourne, Bournemouth
Extensions, structural openings, new brickwork and garden walls, render and plastering, then roofs, flat roofs and gutters, across Southbourne from the cliff top and the Grove to Tuckton. BH6, a couple of miles along the coast from our base.
The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Thomas Hannen prices every job himself.
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Building work in Southbourne
Extensions, brickwork and render in Southbourne
Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd builds rear extensions, opens up rooms with a steel beam, lays new brickwork and garden walls, and renders, plasters and roofs the work, across Southbourne from the Overcliff to Tuckton. The site visit and the written itemised quote cost nothing.
Many of Southbourne's older houses date from the early 1900s or between the wars. On those the extension usually goes on the back and opens the kitchen into it. A good number have been split into flats, and there the freeholder has to agree first (see below). On a detached house the neighbour question is the digging: new foundations close to next door's and deeper than theirs need a notice under section 6 of the Party Wall Act. The build runs in order: foundations inspected, blockwork to plate height, the steel in over the opening on padstones, the roof on and weathered, then first fix, plaster and finish.
Where the house is rendered, new work is finished to match with render over blockwork, and where it is brick we lay facing brick to suit. Inside we plaster and fit kitchens, and outside we lay drives and sort the drainage. Our recent projects include a bare blockwork wall taken to finished render.
Two Southbourne checks
BCP Council decides planning here. Part of the Grove is in the Southbourne Grove Conservation Area, and the edge of Wick Village reaches in by Tuckton; the council's list of conservation areas shows the boundaries. Inside them permitted development is narrower, so check before drawings. And a lot of Southbourne homes are flats in converted houses. If you own one, an extension or any work to the structure needs the freeholder's consent under your lease, so read it before you pay for plans.
Building control takes a building notice or full plans and issues a completion certificate at the end. For roof work alone, see the page for roofers in Southbourne.
Older houses
Opening up and extending an older Southbourne house
Opening up an older Southbourne house means dealing with what the builders of the time left: solid internal walls carrying floors, chimney breasts in the middle of rooms, and render or brick that the new work has to match. Thomas looks at all three at the free site visit.
Knock-throughs and chimney breasts
In a house of this age the wall between the front and back rooms often carries the floor joists above, and sometimes a wall upstairs. An engineer sizes a steel beam, the wall is propped, the opening cut and the beam set on padstones. Taking out a chimney breast downstairs means supporting the breast and stack above it, and building control has to approve that too. If the breast is on a wall you share with next door, a party wall notice goes in before any cutting.
Matching render and brick on new work
New walls are built in block and rendered, or faced in brick, to suit the house. On render the finish is what people notice: smooth, roughcast or pebbledash, and the colour once it has weathered. On an older wall the existing render may be lime, and new work next to it should be breathable too, so the old wall can still dry out. Where the house has brick, we match the brick, the bond and the mortar colour, and lay a sample panel before the order goes in.
If water is coming in now, ring 07435 839745 and tell us whether you are in a house or a flat, because that decides who has to agree the repair. The roof side of that is on the page for roof repairs in Southbourne.
Three kinds of street
The cliff top, the Grove and the river end are three different jobs
On the cliff top, Southbourne Overcliff Drive and the roads that run back from it take the weather straight off Poole Bay. BS 8104 is the British Standard for judging how exposed a wall is to wind-driven rain, and on a very exposed wall that judgement changes the build: whether a new cavity can be fully filled with insulation, how the cavity trays and weep holes are detailed, and which render system goes on.
Salt and wind also work on the roof, especially the ridge and verges. The fixing detail for that is on the page for roofers in Southbourne.
The Grove. Southbourne Grove is a long shopping street, and most of its buildings have flats over the shops. That changes the job more than the building does. The front elevation sits over a busy pavement, so a scaffold needs a licence from the council and a gantry or fan so people can walk underneath. The back is often reached through a service lane or a yard. The flat above may belong to one person, the shop to another and the freehold to a third, so the quote has to say plainly what it covers. The same applies around Southbourne Crossroads further east.
The river end. Back towards Tuckton, Belle Vue Road and the Stour the houses are sheltered from the sea, and the work is driven by age: extensions on 1920s and 1930s houses, garden walls and brick that has lost its pointing. Part of the low ground by the river is mapped as flood zone. An extension there that needs planning permission also needs a flood risk assessment, and a new drive or patio changes where the water goes. Check your address on the government flood map before anything is drawn.
What we do here
Every trade, written for Southbourne housing
Southbourne houses are mostly older and many are split into flats, so the trades below are matched to what is on the house. Each one is priced as its own line on one written quote from one visit.
Brickwork and repointing
We build extension walls, garden walls and piers in brick to match. Pre-war brick in Southbourne was laid in soft lime mortar. Repointing it in hard cement traps moisture in the wall, and the face of the brick blows off in a frost. We rake out and repoint in lime on older walls, and rebuild garden walls, piers and chimney stacks.
Bricklaying RepointingRender and plastering
New extension walls are rendered to match the house. Render on a seaward gable cracks, lets driven rain in behind it and starts to sound hollow, so we cut out and patch, or re-render in a breathable or silicone system. Inside, we plaster new work and re-skim ceilings and walls.
Rendering PlasteringDriveways and patios
Front gardens on the long roads in Southbourne are often big enough to park on. Block paving, resin-bound or tarmac, laid on a proper sub-base with the water dealt with. Over five square metres of front garden in a hard surface needs planning permission unless it drains.
Driveways PatiosInsulation
A loft top-up is simplest while the roof is open anyway. Rooms in the roof and dormers need boards between and under the rafters with ventilation kept clear. Solid or older cavity walls need a survey before anyone fills or lines them.
Insulation Loft insulation Wall insulationRoofing and chimneys
Edwardian houses in Southbourne mostly carry clay plain tile or natural slate on steep hipped roofs, with big chimney stacks. The tiles usually outlast the nails and battens, so a lot of these roofs need a repair or a strip and relay reusing the sound tiles, with the lead flashings round the stack renewed while the scaffold is up. The later estates and blocks are mostly concrete interlocking tile.
Roofers in SouthbourneFlat roofs
Rear extensions, dormers, garages and the tops of bay windows, many still on old felt. If the deck is sound we re-cover in GRP fibreglass, EPDM rubber or torch-on felt; if it is soft underfoot the deck comes up first. The fall and the edge detail matter more than which material you pick.
Flat roofing in SouthbourneFascias, soffits and gutters
Timber fascias go soft behind a gutter that has been overflowing for years, and on a big detached house there is a lot of perimeter. We replace rotten boards, rehang sagging runs and clear gutters so the water reaches the downpipe instead of the wall.
Fascias, soffits and guttering Gutter cleaningExterior cleaning
Moss on north slopes, green algae on render and black staining on paving. We soft wash with a biocide rather than blast with a pressure lance, which drives water up under the tile laps and strips the surface off render.
Exterior cleaningFlats and freeholders
If you own a flat, the roof over it is probably not yours
A lot of Southbourne's larger houses were divided into flats long ago, and there are purpose built blocks as well. On nearly every lease the roof, the outside walls, the gutters and the render belong to the freeholder, which may be a landlord, a managing agent or a company the flat owners run between them. The owner of the top floor flat with the stain usually cannot instruct the repair alone.
Bigger jobs then need a formal consultation. When any one leaseholder's share passes a threshold set in regulations, the freeholder has to consult every leaseholder first, under section 20 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. A re-roof or a full re-render on a block nearly always crosses it, so allow for the notice periods before a start date.
Planning is different for flats too. The householder permitted development rights do not apply to a building containing flats, because the Order defines a dwellinghouse to exclude one. Changing the look of the covering or adding a rooflight on a block usually needs an application where the same change on a house would not.
The same applies to building work. Knocking through a wall, extending, or cutting into the structure of a flat nearly always needs the freeholder's written consent under the lease, even inside your own flat. None of that should stop you ringing. We will look for free, write down what we found with photographs, and address an itemised quote to whoever is paying, so the agent has something they can put in front of the other owners.
Conservation and listed buildings
One conservation area on the Grove, and the edge of another by the river
Southbourne Grove was designated a conservation area in 1993, and BCP Council now keeps the list and maps. It covers the historic shopping street, not the residential roads around it, so a house two streets back is very unlikely to be inside it. The edge of the Wick Village conservation area reaches into Southbourne down by the Stour, but most of that one sits in Wick itself.
Inside a conservation area, like for like repairs are normally fine: the same slate, the same tile, the same brick and mortar colour. What changes things is altering the appearance. Cladding a building in render, stone or timber needs permission there, as the Planning Portal guidance on external walls explains, and so does swapping a natural covering for something that looks different.
A handful of buildings in and around the heart of Southbourne are listed, among them St Katharine's Church and its church hall and the water tower. Any work that affects the character of a listed building needs listed building consent, repairs included, so tell us early if yours is one and we will price it in matching materials.
How a job runs
From your call to the site being swept
Ring 07435 839745 or send the form. Thomas Hannen, who owns the firm, comes out, gets into the loft as well as looking at the outside, and prices it himself. You get a written, itemised quote, with the scaffold as its own line, so you can compare it line by line with anyone else's.
A roof is only opened as far as it can be made watertight that day. The site is swept each day and the waste leaves with us.
If opening up shows more than the quote allowed for, a failed lintel over a bay, a rotten joist or a soft deck under a flat roof, we stop, photograph it, show you and price it in writing. Nothing extra is done until you have agreed it.
Scheduled work Mon to Fri, 8am to 6pm. Something urgent? Ring, and if we miss you we call back.
Reviews
What customers said
A new roof and a patio, both written by the customer after the job. The roofing customer liked having each stage explained, and the patio customer was pleased with how the finished paving looks.
…The team were friendly, professional, and always turned up when they said they would. They took the time to explain everything, so I knew exactly what was happening throughout…
Really happy with our new patio from Bournemouth Roofing & Building. It looks beautiful and we couldn't be more pleased with how it's turned out…
Free quote
How do you get a free quote in Southbourne?
Send the form or ring 07435 839745. Thomas Hannen comes out to Southbourne, looks at the job and puts an itemised price in writing, and neither the visit nor the written quote costs anything.
Our base is at 80a Wolverton Road, Boscombe, Bournemouth BH7 6HX. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Planning at a glance
Do you need planning permission in Southbourne?
Most repairs in Southbourne need no application at all. What decides whether a change to the outside of your house does is who the council is, whether a conservation area or a listing applies, and whether the place sits in a protected landscape.
| Question | In Southbourne |
|---|---|
| Who decides | BCP Council is the planning authority for Southbourne. BCP Council's heritage pages set out what it controls. |
| Conservation area | Yes: Southbourne Grove Conservation Area. Check whether your street is inside the boundary before changing anything visible. |
| Listed buildings | Yes, there are listed buildings in and around Southbourne. If yours is one, work can need listed building consent. |
| Protected landscape | No National Park or National Landscape covers Southbourne. |
Questions
Southbourne questions
How can I find a good builder in Southbourne?
Ask for written, itemised quotes from two firms so you can compare the same job. Check the company on Companies House: ours is Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, company number 15471719. Read reviews that trace to a real customer, like the verified one on our Checkatrade profile. Keep any deposit modest; Citizens Advice says not to agree to more than 25 percent. If you own a flat, ask the builder whether the freeholder's consent is in place before anything is booked.
Can I knock through between the front and back rooms of an older house?
Usually, yes. In a Southbourne house of the early 1900s or the inter-war years the wall between the two rooms often carries the floor above, so an engineer sizes a steel beam and building control approves it through a building notice or full plans. The wall is propped, the opening cut, and the beam set on padstones, then boxed in and plastered. If a chimney breast is coming out as well, the stack above has to be supported, and on a shared wall a party wall notice goes to next door first.
Can you match the render on my house for an extension?
Usually, yes. We look at the texture (smooth, roughcast or pebbledash), the colour and what the existing render is made of. On an older wall with lime render, the new work should be breathable too. We do a small sample on the new blockwork before the whole wall goes on, and new render takes a while to weather in, so we tell you what to expect in the first year.
I own a flat in a converted house. Can I extend or knock through?
Only with the freeholder's written consent, because the structure and the outside usually belong to them under the lease. Planning is different too: the householder permitted development rights do not apply to flats, as the Order defines a dwellinghouse to exclude them, so an extension on a flat needs a planning application from BCP Council. We can look for free and write up what the work involves, so you have something to send the freeholder.
Is my house in a conservation area?
Probably not, unless it is on or right beside Southbourne Grove, or down by the river at the edge of Wick. The boundaries follow particular streets, so check the BCP Council map for your address before you change a material.
Can you do the extension, the render and the roof in one go?
Yes. One visit and one written itemised quote, with each trade on its own line, and one scaffold where the jobs share it. The roof detail is on the page for roofing in Southbourne.
Who you are dealing with
A local firm you can check
All of Southbourne is on our list, from Southbourne Overcliff Drive and Fisherman's Walk back to the Grove and the Crossroads, and down to Tuckton, Belle Vue Road and the Stour, across BH6, with BCP Council for planning and building control.
You are dealing with Bournemouth Roofing & Building, the trading name of Bournemouth Roofing & Building Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15471719. That takes a minute to check. Thomas Hannen owns the firm and he prices every Southbourne job himself, so the person who quotes it is the person answerable for it.
There is a verified customer's 10 out of 10 on our Checkatrade profile. The site visit is free and so is the written itemised quote. Scheduled work runs Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm.
Free quote
Get a price for your Southbourne property
Tell us the road and whether it is a house or a flat. Send a couple of photos or book a visit, and we will put a clear written quote in front of you.