GS Renovation carries out structural alterations in Hemel Hempstead: new supported openings, beams, underpinning and repairs to floors and roofs. Ground conditions and consent requirements change across the town, so we appoint a structural engineer first and build to the design that comes back. We never produce the calculations ourselves.
Which consents actually bite in Hemel Hempstead
Two things decide it: whether you are inside the conservation area, and whether the building is listed. Dacorum's conservation area schedule lists one conservation area named Hemel Hempstead, covering the Old Town. It was originally designated on 7 October 1968, with an adopted boundary amendment on 21 January 2014, and it covers 7.26 hectares. The character statement divides it into three character areas: the High Street, St Mary's Church and edge of Gadebridge Park, and the lower section of the High Street.
Outside that boundary, permitted development rights on a Hemel Hempstead house are not cut back by an address level direction. Dacorum publishes householder Article 4 directions at named addresses in Berkhamsted, Northchurch, Ringshall, Tring and Little Gaddesden, but none in Hemel Hempstead. We still check your property's own designations before a scope is agreed, because listing and conservation area status are recorded address by address.
Roofs, frontages and materials inside the conservation area
Alterations that break the roof plane or change the frontage need permission there. In the Hemel Hempstead conservation area, a roof alteration that would protrude more than 150mm beyond the plane of the original roof requires planning permission. The character statement records handmade red clay tiles and natural slate as the roof coverings of the Old Town, so a replacement covering is a design question as well as a consent question.
On the elevations, the character statement identifies cambered heads to windows with rubbed brickwork as a key characteristic of the 18th century brick town houses of the High Street. It records a rich diversity of materials there, including red, purple and brown bricks, timber, render and stucco, flint and terracotta. A new opening in a frontage like that has to be detailed to match, which is a bricklaying decision as much as a structural one.
The ground under a Hemel Hempstead alteration
It is chalk, with variable material sitting over it. The Old Town character statement describes the underlying geology as chalk of the Chilterns, with the dip slope overlain by clay with flints. British Geological Survey mapping shows the bedrock beneath the Old Town High Street as the New Pit Chalk Formation, with the Lewes Nodular Chalk Formation mapped immediately to the east and west, including beneath Gadebridge Park and The Bury. At Warners End, BGS mapping shows Clay-with-flints over Lewes Nodular Chalk, with Head mapped only locally towards the northern edge of the neighbourhood.
Head is the deposit that makes foundation and underpinning work hard to predict. The BGS defines it as poorly sorted and poorly stratified angular rock debris and clayey hillwash and soil creep, mantling a hillslope and deposited by solifluction and gelifluction processes. Unsorted material like that can give different bearing at two corners of one building. An engineer's trial hole at the actual location beats anything read off a map.
Who you deal with, and who signs the work off
Two separate organisations, on two separate routes. Dacorum Borough Council's planning department is based at The Forum, Marlowes, Hemel Hempstead HP1 1DN, and its conservation team can be reached on 01442 228000. Building control is not the council. It is Hertfordshire Building Control, based at 4th Floor, Campus West, Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire AL8 6BX. It describes itself as a not for profit organisation, stating that all profit is returned to Hertfordshire local councils and their residents.
For you that means permission comes from one place and the technical sign off from another. We coordinate both, which is the point of using one contractor rather than assembling the job yourself. Hemel Hempstead uses the postcode districts HP1, HP2 and HP3, and we quote across all three.
- Structural surveys and engineer coordination
- Reinstatement, plastering and finishing after structural works
- Load paths carried down to foundations on new piers and pads
- Steel beam and RSJ installation
- Temporary works, propping and needling
Why Hemel Hempstead Homeowners Choose GS Renovation
GS Renovation starts a structural alteration with the engineer, not with a price. We appoint the structural engineer, build to the calculations, and coordinate the building control applications and inspections through to completion. We are clear about what we are: a contractor. We do not write calculations, and we are not surveyors, party wall surveyors or architects. We are fully insured, registered in England under company number 14611254, and rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder.
- Work sequenced around the surveyors' schedule of condition before excavation
- Structural engineer instructed and coordinated on your behalf
- Fully insured, with cover in place on every site
- Rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder
- Underpinning carried out in sequenced bays, never one long trench
- Clean, tidy and reliable tradespeople