Structural alteration covers work that changes how a building carries load: new openings, beams, removals and the making good that follows. GS Renovation is a contractor. We appoint the structural engineer, build to the calculations issued, and coordinate building control. We do not produce structural calculations, and we are not surveyors or architects.
Who decides a structural alteration in Hatfield
Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council is the local planning authority for Hatfield and decides householder planning applications in the town. Building regulations approval sits alongside planning as a separate consent, and one does not stand in for the other.
The council publishes a searchable planning applications register at planning.welhat.gov.uk, with a basic search by application number or address and an advanced search. It is worth checking what has already been applied for at your address before a design is fixed, because earlier conditions and decisions shape what is realistic.
Two Article 4 Directions that apply in Hatfield
An Article 4 Direction confirmed in June 2022 removes the permitted development right to build additional storeys onto existing blocks of flats in Hatfield. The Secretary of State modified the boundary of that direction in October 2022, and the council publishes the Article 4 Class A Modification Notice dated 18 October 2022. The boundary, not only the direction, has to be checked for a given block.
At the 2021 census, 9,820 households in Welwyn Hatfield, or 21.3 per cent, were in a purpose-built block of flats or tenement. Alterations inside those buildings run through the lease as well as through the regulations, so both are established before design work begins.
Old Hatfield, listing and internal alterations
The Old Hatfield Conservation Area was designated in 1968, and the Historic England record for it carries an update date of 5 August 1983. Fore Street in Old Hatfield carries 15 separate entries on the National Heritage List for England, all at Grade II. Listed building consent is a separate application from planning permission, and it reaches internal work.
Listing is not confined to the historic core. Numbers 23 to 41 The Ryde were listed at Grade II on 22 December 1998, and numbers 43 to 67, with an attached court of six garages, are listed under entry 1246831. Check the status of an address before you plan an opening in it.
Ground conditions are not the same across the town
The British Geological Survey maps Lambeth Group, a sedimentary bedrock of clay, silt and sand, beneath much of South Hatfield rather than chalk, with chalk returning as the mapped bedrock a short distance to the east. Over the former Hatfield airfield, now Hatfield Business Park, the superficial deposit is mapped as Lowestoft Formation diamicton, which the survey describes as an extensive sheet of chalky till with about 30 per cent carbonate in its matrix.
Chalk also moves water. The Water End Swallow Holes at Welham Green, in the same borough south of Hatfield, were notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1969, and there jointing and solution processes have enlarged cracks in the chalk into channels which eventually collapse. Where an alteration reaches the ground, the engineer's investigation decides what the foundation has to do.
- Steel goalpost and portal frames to the engineer's design
- Steel beam and RSJ installation
- Drainage diversion and build-over agreements where required
- Structural surveys and engineer coordination
- Basement and cellar alterations with retaining support
Why Choose GS Renovation in Hatfield
Structural alteration in this borough carries a planning layer on top of the structural one. Two Article 4 Directions apply in Hatfield, one of them with a boundary modified by the Secretary of State, and conservation area and listed status reach internal work that would be unregulated elsewhere. We settle the designations and the register position before a design is fixed, appoint the structural engineer, and coordinate the building control application and inspections. We are fully insured and quotations are free.
- Building control inspected at foundation, steel and completion
- Our own trades on site rather than a chain of subcontractors
- Paperwork and certificates handed over for when you sell
- Every alteration certified rather than quietly built over
- We build to the party wall award the surveyors agree, to the letter
- Dust screens and floor protection in occupied homes