Roofers in Westbourne

When the Victoria County History surveyed Westbourne in the early 1950s, it found houses of flint and brick, timber-framed in places with flint filling the gaps, and many roofed in thatch. That description is seventy years old, and roofs get replaced, so we never assume what a particular house carries. Only a look inside the roof space and at the slopes settles it. What the account does tell you is the kind of building underneath: timber frames and flint walls. Where a frame is old and its walls were laid in lime, a roof put on top has to suit that, or the frame pays for it, which is why a quote for an old Westbourne house starts with the timbers and not the tiles. The same history records a weekly market and an annual fair in 1302, though the market had died out by the late 18th century. With that much history, the village has roofs of every age, and you cannot assume that two neighbours need the same repair.

1.1 Old frames, read from the roof space

With a timber-framed cottage we begin by climbing into the roof space to look. We check the wall plate (the horizontal beam along the top of the wall, which the rafters bear on), the rafter feet where a blocked gutter may have soaked them, and any patches of newer softwood that show where someone has repaired before. If the timbers are sound, the covering can be repaired or relaid and the frame left alone. If a rafter foot has gone soft, we show you the photograph and explain what splicing in new timber involves before any tile comes off. Our aim is a repair sized to the fault, never a bigger job than the roof needs.

1.2 Thatch next door, and what is ours to touch

Thatch is a craft with its own tradesmen, and we leave it to them. Our work beside a thatched cottage is whatever touches it: the lead flashing at the point a tiled extension meets a thatched wall, the chimney stack, a shared gutter, the slope of the house on the other side of a boundary. A chimney repair on an old stack often means repointing in a lime-compatible mortar and renewing the lead around the base, and both are done from a scaffold or ladder platform that keeps clear of the thatch. When a party wall is involved, the neighbour is told in good time. Scaffold boards and ladders are padded where they touch old render or flint, and photographs are taken before and after, giving you a record of the roof as it was handed back. Where the survey shows a roof is sound apart from the chimney or the lead, that is what the written quote covers, and nothing more.

Westbourne has its own conservation area, and Chichester District Council published a character appraisal for it in 2022. Westbourne sits beyond the boundary of the South Downs National Park, so the same district council deals with planning applications and with building control. Most roof work here is routine and needs nothing more than a sensible quote. That said, a village with a 13th-century church, itself listed Grade I, and houses from the 1600s has listed buildings in it, and a few minutes with the list entry saves a lot of grief later. The questions below matter when a house is listed, when the material is changing or when the job is big enough to bring in the Building Regulations.

3.1 Planning, building control and the church

On re-roofing, the Planning Portal says building control normally needs no application where less than 25 per cent of the total building envelope and less than 50 per cent of the roof is affected. Beyond either limit, or with a covering that is heavier, you need the council's building control team or a registered building control approver (the private route, regulated since April 2024), and we explain which applies before work starts. Approved Document L also asks for the roof's insulation to be upgraded where more than 50 per cent of its surface is renovated. Planning permission is not normally needed for a like-for-like covering, with caveats for listed buildings and for any Article 4 direction, so confirm with Chichester District Council's planning team rather than trusting a rule of thumb. St John the Baptist is an Anglican parish church, and listed works on a church in use go through the faculty route instead of the council's listed building consent.

3.2 When the job is over the county line

Westbourne sits close to Hampshire, and the highway authority changes at the border. On the West Sussex side the licence is the county council's to grant, and it wants at least 10 working days' notice and charges £266 for a one-month licence. Over the county boundary, Hampshire County Council has its own terms: a ten clear working day lead time before the start, £211.90 for the opening fortnight, and no extensions. Neither fee is ours, and both depend on the scaffold standing on or over the road. Thinking of a roof window inside the conservation area? Our skylight planning permission guide comes first. For a plain repair-or-replace opinion, we look over the roof, take pictures of each fault and write the verdict down.