Structural alteration in Welwyn Garden City can run through two approval routes at once, and they are not connected to each other. Planning and building control are one route. The Estate Management Scheme is a separate consent covering a defined part of the town. Both can bite on the same job, so the order you do things in decides how smoothly it runs.
Two policy tests apply here, not one
Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council is the local planning authority, and its adopted plan carries a policy written for this town alone. The adopted Local Plan contains Policy SP 15, titled The Historic Environment of Welwyn Garden City. Policy SP 15 requires all development proposals to demonstrate, through their design and detailing, that they have responded to the key characteristics of a garden city. An alteration that changes an elevation therefore has to answer a design test as well as a structural one.
The Estate Management Scheme reaches roofs and elevations
Consent under the scheme is required for alterations to the external appearance of buildings, and for alterations to roofs, within the covered area. The scheme is governed by named policies, including EM1 Extensions and Alterations, EM2 Erection of New Buildings, EM3 Works to Trees and Hedgerows and EM4 Hard Surfacing. If an alteration touches a roof line, a chimney, a window opening or an elevation, that consent sits alongside anything the planning system requires.
Peartree and Beehive were built decades apart
The two neighbourhoods east of the centre are not the same vintage. Building in the Peartree area began in the early 1930s, and the Beehive area was constructed almost thirty years after Peartree. The Peartree Conservation Area Character Appraisal and Management Plan was prepared by Place Services for Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council and is dated June 2019.
That appraisal records the residential units as consistently two storeys high with red pantile roofs. It describes the later bungalows at the end of the Pinewood cul de sac as intrusive to the character of the area. It also records that there are no designated heritage assets within the Peartree Conservation Area. Some properties on Woodhall Lane incorporate half dormers, which reduce the apparent height of the building without reducing the accommodation inside.
What is under the house
Chalk bedrock sits under the town, with a superficial cover that is not the same everywhere. British Geological Survey 1:50,000 mapping records the bedrock beneath the town centre, Handside, Peartree and Beehive as the Lewes Nodular Chalk Formation and Seaford Chalk Formation, undifferentiated. Two houses in the town can still sit on materially different bearing strata, because Handside is mapped on glacial till while Peartree and Beehive are mapped on sand and gravel. The same mapping records no artificial, or made, ground at sampled points in the town centre, Handside, Peartree, Beehive, Haldens, Hollybush, Panshanger and Broadwater Road.
- Building control applications and completion certification
- Steel beam and RSJ installation
- Bressummer and bay window support to period frontages
- Drainage diversion and build-over agreements where required
- Load-bearing wall removal and new structural openings
Trusted Structural Alterations in Welwyn Garden City
One job, two consent routes, one contractor. We coordinate the structural engineer, the building control application and inspections, and the sequence of work on site, so you are not holding three conversations at once. We appoint engineers and build to their calculations. We do not produce calculations, and we are not surveyors or architects. GS Renovation Ltd is fully insured, rated 4.9 from 31 reviews on MyBuilder, and registered in England, company number 14611254.
- The engineer's calculations obtained and worked to on site
- Load paths carried properly down to foundations
- Building control inspected at foundation, steel and completion
- Materials priced at options, so you choose the finish
- Straight advice on what is and is not worth spending money on
- Building control applications and inspections coordinated for you