Extensions in Southminster

Extending in Southminster

The designation is smaller than people expect, the houses are smaller than people expect, and the water is under the floor rather than over a sea wall.

Southminster is the largest village in the south of the Maldon District, around four and a half thousand people in the ward, with its own station at the end of the branch line from Wickford. It sits on the Dengie, the flat farmed peninsula between the Blackwater and the Crouch. It does not sit on the marsh. The string of villages along this side of the peninsula follows a low rise that was the shoreline before the marshes were reclaimed, and Southminster is on that rise.

That distinction runs through everything below. People come to an extension here braced for a flood problem and a heritage problem, and generally find both are narrower than they feared, while the two things that actually move the price are groundwater and distance.

Maldon District Council, and a conservation area you can walk in five minutes

The boundary is drawn tight around the historic street frontage, and most of the village sits outside it.

Maldon District Council determines applications here. It is not Chelmsford City, whose area begins further west along the same branch line, and it is not Rochford, which is on the far bank of the Crouch. Authority is never safely inferred from proximity anywhere in this county, and on this peninsula least of all.

The Southminster conservation area exists and it is modest. It runs as a narrow band along the historic frontage through the middle of the village rather than wrapping round the whole of it, which means a clear majority of houses in Southminster are not inside it. The council’s adopted Local Development Plan records the Southminster conservation area as carrying an Article 4 direction covering dwelling houses. A direction of that kind withdraws permitted development rights that would otherwise apply, so inside the boundary work that needs nothing at all elsewhere needs a planning application. Precisely which rights, and over exactly which properties, is a question for the council against your address, and asking costs nothing. Our page on Article 4 directions explains what the instrument does and does not do.

Outside the boundary the ordinary rules run: the limits on how far a rear extension may come out and how high it may go, and the separate rules for dormers and for rooflights. Our page on permitted development rights for extensions sets out the measurements. A lawful development certificate is the cheap way to put a permitted development claim beyond argument before anyone tries to sell the house.

Small houses, being made bigger

This is not a village of large period properties, and the brief follows directly from that.

The district’s own housing needs assessment found the highest proportion of one and two bedroom social dwellings anywhere in Maldon District here, and a high proportion of two bedroom owner occupied properties across Southminster and Burnham together. Around the historic core there is a scatter of older cottages and the medieval church of St Leonard. Almost everything else is twentieth century: post-war semi detached pairs and short terraces on wide plots, later private estate housing, and a large number of bungalows.

Those post-war plots are the opportunity. They are wide rather than deep, they usually have genuine side access, and the gardens are generous by the standards of anywhere closer to Chelmsford. A two bedroom house on a plot like that becomes a four bedroom house without the garden feeling swallowed, and that is the commonest brief in the village. It generally arrives as two moves rather than one: a rear extension plus a side extension, or a rear extension plus the roof.

Which of those works depends on how the roof was built. Houses from the middle of the 1960s onwards mostly have trussed rafter roofs, and a trussed roof cannot simply be boarded out and lit with a window, because the trusses are a structural system and using the space means replacing them with a floor and new supports. The bungalows are worth looking at hardest, since a bungalow roof is often the cheapest square metres available on the plot. Our loft conversions page goes through what each roof type allows.

What is under the village

London Clay at depth, and a water table close enough to the surface to be the main event.

The bedrock across the Dengie is London Clay, with head and river terrace deposits over it inland and intertidal deposits out at the coast. The district’s flood risk assessment classes the soils around Southminster, along with Tillingham and Bradwell-on-Sea, as loamy soils with naturally high groundwater.

High groundwater is what changes a price here. A trench dug dry at nine in the morning can have standing water in it by three in the afternoon. Sides slump. Concrete cast into water is weaker than concrete cast into a dry hole, so the pour gets planned rather than improvised: a pump on hire, trench fill rather than a narrow strip so the dig is filled the same day it is opened, and sometimes a different foundation altogether. None of that is exotic. All of it is money, and it is money that a quotation written without a trial hole has not allowed for. Our page on trench fill foundations explains why depth and width are priced together.

The same water table changes the drainage answer. A soakaway works by letting water disperse into the ground beneath it, and ground already close to saturation disperses very little. On plenty of plots here a soakaway is not a viable destination for the run-off from a new roof and a new patio, and the water has to be taken somewhere designed instead. That is settled at drawing stage rather than at the point Building Control asks the question.

The clay is still clay, so trees still matter. There are fewer large garden specimens than in a suburb like Lexden, but field boundary oaks and hedgerow trees stand on the back fence of plenty of plots at the edge of the village, and influencing distance is measured the same way wherever the tree happens to be growing. A tree in a hedge line is assessed on species, mature height and distance exactly as a garden oak would be.

The flood map, and what it is actually showing

The tidal ground on the Dengie is the marsh, and the marsh starts beyond the village.

The district’s flood risk assessment names its tidal flooding concentrations as Burnham-on-Crouch, the Dengie Marshes, Heybridge, Maldon, Mundon, North Fambridge and South Woodham Ferrers. The marsh east of Southminster is genuinely low ground sitting behind a sea wall, and it is farmland and nature reserve rather than housing. The village up on its rise is a different proposition, and for most addresses in it the flood conversation is a short one.

It is still a conversation, because a flood zone is confirmed against a property rather than against a village, and there are brooks and field ditches across the peninsula carrying their own local risk. Where an address does fall in Flood Zone 2 or 3, a proportionate flood risk assessment goes in with the application and sets the finished floor level, and householder work is treated as minor development so the sequential test is not applied to it. Our guide to flood zones and extensions in Essex goes through it.

One further thing is worth saying on any page this close to an estuary, because it is a common and expensive misconception. The Essex Coast recreational disturbance tariff applies to net new dwellings within the zone of influence. An extension to a house that already exists is not a new dwelling and does not attract it.

The end of the line

Being twenty minutes past everything has a price, and it sits in the logistics rather than the labour.

Southminster is the terminus of the railway, and it is not far off the end of the road network either. The B1021 comes up from Burnham, runs through the village as North Street and carries on towards Tillingham and Bradwell-on-Sea. Nothing passes through on its way somewhere else.

In practice that means fewer and larger deliveries. A concrete wagon making the run out to the Dengie from a mid Essex plant has a long journey and a limited discharge window once it arrives, so a substantial pour gets booked around the wagon rather than the other way about. A forgotten lintel is not a ten minute trip to a merchant, it is half a day gone. Planning the sequence properly is worth more here than it is in a town, and it is the difference between a programme that holds and one that quietly slips a week at a time for reasons nobody can put a finger on afterwards.

The compensation is that the plots themselves are easy to work. Wide frontages, side access on most of the twentieth century stock, and room for a skip on a driveway instead of a licence and a permit on the road.

What people build here

Two briefs cover most of it, and both are about bedrooms.

The first is the wrap of rear and side on a post-war semi. Out the back for a kitchen and living space, out to the side for a bedroom or a utility and shower room, tied together under one roof so it reads as part of the house rather than as two afterthoughts stuck on. The side gate and the wide plot are what make it affordable, because the machine gets to the back and the spoil never goes through the hall.

The second is the bungalow, either extended outwards or opened upwards into the roof. Where the roof is a cut roof with purlins there is usually a conversion in it. Where it is trussed, going out is generally the better value, and the flat wide plots here take that comfortably. Which way to go is settled by looking in the loft hatch, not by looking at the elevation.

Questions we get asked in Southminster

Are we Maldon District or Chelmsford City?

Maldon District Council determines applications in Southminster. Chelmsford City’s area is west of the peninsula. We confirm the authority on the address before anything is drawn, because getting it wrong wastes weeks.

We are nowhere near the sea wall. Do we still need a flood risk assessment?

Usually not, but it is answered by checking the map against your property rather than by looking out of the window. Where an address is in Flood Zone 2 or 3 the assessment is proportionate and it mostly settles the finished floor level.

Can we just put a soakaway in the garden?

Not always. It depends on a percolation test rather than on hope, and with a naturally high water table around the village the test sometimes says no. If it does, the surface water goes somewhere else and that gets designed in rather than bolted on.

Is a bungalow cheaper to extend than a house?

Per square metre going outwards, usually yes, because there is no upper floor to prop, no scaffold at height and no first floor structure to tie into. Going upwards into the roof is a different calculation and turns on how that roof was built.

Getting a price for a Southminster extension

Our team comes out and surveys the property properly. The ground and the depth at which water is likely to appear, the access down the side, the drain runs and where the surface water can realistically go, the roof construction, and the designation on the address rather than on the village. Most people who call us already have drawings and permission and want a builder to price the work and build it. That is the ordinary job here, and we are glad to work to somebody else’s plans. Where the drawings do not exist yet, we bring in the technician who draws it and the structural engineer we work with, we manage the application with Maldon District Council, we notify Building Control and we run the job as main contractor.

We carry £2m public liability cover and everything is built to current Building Regulations. We arrange the inspections and see the job through to the point where a completion certificate is issued. The survey and the quotation cost nothing.