About Probuild Extensions

Who you are dealing with

Our team runs the jobs and comes out to look at your property. He has 25+ years in the trade, and the first visit is a survey rather than a sales call: the ground, the trees, the access, the existing structure, where the drains run, and what you are actually trying to achieve, which is often not the extension you arrived thinking you wanted.

Essex Probuild Ltd is registered in England and Wales, company number 15979928, at Scarletts Chase Offices, Scarletts Chase, West Bergholt, Colchester, CO6 3DH. The company is younger than the experience behind it, which is normal in this trade: people spend a long time on the tools before they incorporate.

What we do differently

We take the project management off you. That is the whole proposition.

The usual arrangement on an extension puts the homeowner in the middle of five parties who each answer to nobody in particular: a designer, a structural engineer, a planning department, Building Control and a set of trades. When something does not line up, and on a building job something always does not line up, the homeowner is the one making a decision they have no way of assessing.

We work as main contractor. We bring in the technician who produces the drawings and the structural engineer who produces the calculations. We manage the planning route, whether that is a Lawful Development Certificate, prior approval or a full application. We notify Colchester City Council Building Control and we deal with the inspections. The trades answer to us, and we answer to you.

One contract. One number to ring. One person accountable from the first sketch to the completion certificate.

How we quote

We survey before we price, and we price the job we have seen rather than the job on a drawing. Where we make an assumption, the quotation says so and says what happens if it turns out to be wrong.

Stage payments against completed work. No large deposit before anything has happened. Variations priced and approved in writing before they are carried out, never presented afterwards.

If something we find changes the picture, we stop and show you. On a building job that is a matter of when rather than if, and how it is handled is most of what separates a good experience from a bad one.

What we will tell you honestly

That some briefs are not worth building. That a deep extension can make the rest of your house darker. That the tree at the end of the garden may cost you more in foundations than the glazing you were arguing about. That planning outcomes are the council’s decision and nobody can promise you one.

Being told what a job depends on before being told what it costs is, in our experience, what people actually want and rarely get.

Where we work

We are based in West Bergholt, a village about three miles north west of Colchester city centre. We work across Colchester and roughly thirty miles around, which takes in Lexden, Stanway, Mile End, Myland, Prettygate and the rest of the city’s neighbourhoods, out through Wivenhoe, West Mersea, Tiptree, Dedham, Coggeshall and Marks Tey, and as far as Witham, Braintree, Halstead, Manningtree, Clacton, Maldon, Sudbury, Chelmsford and Ipswich at the edges.

If you are not sure whether you are inside that, ring and ask. It is a quick answer.

The practical details

• Insurance: £2m public liability cover in place.
• Building Control: we notify Colchester City Council Building Control and manage the inspections through to the completion certificate.
• Standards: everything built to current Building Regulations.
• Reviews: we are rated 4.6 out of 5 on Google. Those are shown on this site exactly as they were left, including the one that is not five stars.
• Scope: domestic and residential only. Extensions, conversions and the structural work that goes with them.

The parent company

Essex Probuild Ltd also carries out kitchens, bathrooms and full property renovations across Essex. This site covers extensions specifically, because it is a different enough job to deserve its own explanation. If you want work outside that, it is the same company and the same number.

Last reviewed August 2026.