Structural alteration covers the work that changes how a building carries itself: new openings, wall removals, steel, and floor or roof alterations. We appoint and coordinate the structural engineer, build to the calculations they issue, and manage the building control application and inspections. We are a contractor, not a surveyor or an architect, and we never issue structural calculations.
Your planning authority is on the High Street
Epping's local planning authority is Epping Forest District Council, whose Civic Offices are at 323 High Street, Epping CM16 4BZ, on the High Street itself. Where an alteration needs planning permission as well as building control, the council aims to check the application for validation within five working days of receipt. It then gives you three months to supply anything missing. Knowing that timetable is what stops a structural programme stalling behind a paperwork gap that nobody has chased.
Going below the existing floor is treated as a basement question
Policy 12 of the Epping Town Neighbourhood Plan treats basements and other subterranean alterations as a major concern, given the age of buildings and parts of Epping. It supports them only in accordance with Local Plan policy DM12. That policy requires a Basement Impact Assessment covering drainage, flooding, groundwater conditions and structural stability. A Basement Impact Assessment is also a mandatory local validation requirement for every householder application in the district that includes a basement or other underground development.
So a lowered floor level or a dug out cellar is a consent and design exercise before it is a digging exercise. We say that at quotation stage rather than halfway down.
Conservation area rules that catch structural work
In a conservation area in the Epping Forest district you need planning permission to install dormer windows. You also need it to demolish a building, and to clad the exterior of a house in stone, artificial stone, pebble dash, render, timber, plastic or tiles. Those consents sit alongside building regulations, not instead of them.
Roof alterations are a design question as well. The Epping Conservation Area Character Appraisal describes plain red clay tile roofs in the area as much more steeply pitched than the slate and clay pantile roofs, which can have pitches as shallow as 30 degrees. A dormer or a new roof structure has to sit inside that geometry, so the structural design and the planning design get settled together.
The ground varies across the town and out to Coopersale
On the northern streets of Epping, including Shaftesbury Road, Meadow Road, Tidy's Lane, Granville Road, Fairfield Road, Palmer's Hill and Bury Lane, the British Geological Survey maps Lowestoft Formation chalky glacial till at the surface. On Stonards Hill, on the eastern slope below the town, it maps landslide deposits of clay. Under Vicarage Road, Laburnum Road, Institute Road, Brickfield Road and Parklands in Coopersale it maps Claygate Member bedrock with a Stanmore Gravel cap.
Where an alteration adds load to a foundation, or takes support away from one, that mapping is the first thing the engineer asks about. It also settles whether a trial hole is worth digging before the design is fixed rather than after.
- Chimney breast removal and support to the stack above
- Party Wall Act 1996 notices, awards and schedules of condition
- Steel beam and RSJ installation
- Wall plate, joist hanger and restraint strap installation
- Load paths carried down to foundations on new piers and pads
The GS Renovation Difference in Epping
Structural alteration is a coordination problem before it is a building problem. In Epping your planning authority, your building control body and your conservation officer are the same council, working from the same offices on the High Street. We appoint the structural engineer, build to the issued calculations, and run the building control application and the inspections through that one authority. One point of contact for the whole sequence. Fully insured, free no obligation quotations.
- Paperwork and certificates handed over for when you sell
- Temporary works and needling planned before demolition starts
- Underpinning carried out in sequenced bays, never one long trench
- Work sequenced around the surveyors' schedule of condition before excavation
- One point of contact on the phone, not a call centre
- Rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder