Roofers in Hambrook

Hambrook is the inland northern prolongation of Chidham parish, and the Victoria County History describes the parish as good agricultural land largely used for market gardening. The Ham Brook, a chalk stream, rises here and runs south through Nutbourne into Chichester Harbour. A place with that background can have a mixed collection of outbuildings behind its houses: garages, workshops, stores and lean-tos, put up in different decades from whatever was to hand. We cannot tell you what any of them is made of from the road, but we can tell you what to ask before anyone gets a ladder out, and we would rather you asked it early. Where an outbuilding at the bottom of a garden can be reached only through the house, that changes how we bring materials in and take waste out, so we settle the route on survey day.

1.1 Assume asbestos until it is checked

Guidance from the Health and Safety Executive is to treat a building as containing asbestos until proved otherwise whenever it was constructed or refurbished before 2000. On a garage or outbuilding roof the likely candidate is asbestos cement, the grey corrugated or flat sheeting. The HSE treats careful removal of asbestos cement, handled without breaking it up, as non-licensed work, and says weathered sheet that is not otherwise badly damaged still falls in that group. Sheet that has been substantially damaged or broken up makes the job notifiable non-licensed work, with notice given before it starts. The HSE calls asbestos cement roofs always fragile, so nobody walks on the sheets without boards, and pieces come down by hand, never dropped. Household asbestos waste needs a consignment note and cannot go in an ordinary skip. At survey we look, photograph and tell you which category the roof falls into before any price is agreed.

1.2 When a garage roof needs more than a patch

A felt roof on a small garage or shed that has been patched more than once is often better recovered than patched again. In its October 2026 roof replacement guide, Checkatrade gives around £1,000 to £2,000 for re-felting a garage roof, averaging £1,500. We tell you plainly when a repair will hold and when a new covering is the sounder spend, and whichever quote you hold, check that VAT and any scaffolding are stated in it. A small outbuilding rarely needs a scaffold at all, so a ladder-and-boards job can be priced very differently from a house re-roof, and the written quote says which applies. Where the garage has a pitched roof, the work is the same as on a house, whichever decade it dates from: battens, underlay, covering and a ridge fixed properly. Our garage roof replacement page sets out the options.

A mission room at Hambrook dates from 1923, and the timber-clad St Wilfrid's building seen today is from the 1960s at the earliest. Hambrook lies in the civil parish of Chidham, which was enlarged in April 2003 to take in the west side of Broad Road north of the railway, bringing the whole Hambrook community inside one boundary. A timber-clad building shows its roof edge plainly. Whatever covers it, the bargeboard along the gable, the fascia at the eaves and the junctions between timber and roof deserve a look every few years, because rot starts where wood meets standing water. The same goes for any timber-framed porch, carport or extension in the village. A fascia that looks sound can hide soft wood behind the paint, particularly at the joints and the bottom edge, so we probe it with a screwdriver tip on survey day, and tell you exactly which boards are sound.

3.1 Loft rooms and roof windows on newer houses

Estates of the 1990s often have roof space their owners would like to use. A loft room on a two-storey house needs a protected stair for means of escape, and any roof window has to meet Approved Document L. Until 24 March 2027, Table 4.2 of the 2021 edition sets roof windows at 1.4 W/m²K, or Band B on the Window Energy Rating scale, and rooflights at 2.2 W/m²K. After that date the 2026 edition's Table 3.2 replaces it, keeping the same figures. The planning side is in our guide to skylight planning permission. The council's appraisal list shows no conservation area here, but ask before you assume. If you are planning a dormer or a larger loft conversion, the same list of questions applies: who decides, what the neighbours can see, and what Building Regulations will want for the stair, the insulation and the structure holding it all up. Ask for those answers before a designer is paid.

3.2 One council for planning and building control

Hambrook lies outside the South Downs National Park, so Chichester District Council is both the planning authority and the building control body. A new covering of the same kind seldom needs planning permission, and a listed building would change that. We explain which consents apply in plain words and look after the notification when work is notifiable. When poles will stand on the road or footway, West Sussex County Council issues a highway licence as the authority, and with at least 10 working days to allow, the start date is planned around it. Afterwards we clear all the waste from the site.