Frequently Asked Questions

Certainly. Here is a draft contract for you to view.

Yes, your payment schedule will be in line with the progress of the physical build stage. Payments are linked to successfully building control and inspections.

On page 4 on the contract you will find the typical payment schedule.

Sign/date/keep one for yourself and sign/date/return the other one.

The contract benefits from a 7 days cooling off period.

We have 8 build teams and the crew that you get will be solely determined by your start date. We will be locking in the start date once planning consent is in hand, party wall matters are cleared and we have completed your technical design meeting at the office. Shortly after your build tem will be assigned.

Within 4-week window of having planning consent in hand, clearance of party wall matters and completion of your technical design meeting at the office

Yes, Your project Co-ordinator will prompt you with plenty of notice when payment is due. The good thing is that you have added peace of mind knowing that payments are linked to progress milestones, as and when the appointed independent building control inspector successfully passes a phase of work.

Yes. Our clients can see a copy of all our fully comprehensive insurances.

We quality assure as we go to ensure the snagging list at the end is as lean as possible. At the end of every stage of work our Head Project Manager, Kulvi Sanghera (himself a bona fide Master Builder), uses an internal checklist on our management platform, before kicking on with the next phase of work. This is on top of the periodic building control inspections that will take place by the Building Control Inspector. At the end of which your completion certificate is issued.

Yes. All projects benefit from a 10-year structural guarantee.

Yes. We have immense confidence in the quality of our projects and all guarantees are insurance backed.

City Lofts London. You will have taken a schedule of condition of your own home before works start and this will provide a baseline of the current state of repair of your home.

City Lofts London. You/your neighbours will have taken a schedule of condition of their property before works start and this will provide a baseline of the current state of repair of the property.

Our jobs are never delayed, they can͛t be. We will already have scheduled the team to start the next build the day after yours finishes so we cannot logistically over-run on a job. For the same reason we require timely decisions and material purchase/delivery from the client͛s side.

We cannot comment on the affairs of other firms, but as the home owner you have the obligation to check the VAT status of those you hire. If you appoint a VAT registered company, you are obliged to ensure they collect the VAT from you and pass it on to the HMRC. If they do not, you can become liable as the hiring individual.

We suggest having your finance in place prior to the scaffold going up, so the job runs smoothly an efficiently for all. An option for an independent provider of loans can be found here: https://ideal4finance.com/consumer

It is not that we are the most expensive, we are just the most honest. We do not have hidden costs. We factor in the variables from day 1 and you have witnessed from your loft survey that we are thorough, leaving no stone unturned. We don͛t like to guess prices instead we would rather spend tie upfront calculating exactly what the loft will cost you to the penny. That͛s what you will hear from each and every customer we have ever served. Hear what our clients have to say for yourself.

Who will be given the payment schedule upfront so you know exactly how much the loft conversion will cost and when to make payments. Timely payments keep the work going and mean that we don͛t need to stop working if materials have not been purchased on time.

We anticipate 8-9 weeks for a standard loft conversion, but we say 8 to 10 weeks to cover the possibility of unforeseeable events.

Set aside 12 weeks. Within two weeks of receipt of contract and deposit, an architect will produce your planning drawings and submit them for approval. At the same time as doing this, we suggest you begin Party Wall process. The approval process will take no more than 8 weeks. Once planning is approved and party wall matters are complete, we will then need 4 weeks to get our team ready and start build.

You will get the drawings no more than 14 days after the architectural survey. You can take as long as you need to review and tweak drawings over two revision cycles. If you want anything to be shown on the drawing that is not already included within the price, then we will price the individual items for you as additions. Such as a skylight, extra windows, sliding doors etc.

If using our architectural service to produce drawings, the architect will submit the drawings to the council on your behalf. If you already have drawings, then you submit them to the council.

Party wall notices for loft will need to be issued to all adjoining neighbours unless your property is detached.

Once a Party Wall Award is in place, it stands regardless of whether a new neighbour moves in.

Included in the quote is the cost for skips and rubbish disposal from the site. If the skip is placed on the drive, no permit is required. A highways permit will be required if the skip is placed on the road with no parking restriction. City Lofts London or the skip supplier will apply for the permit and the cost of the permit is paid by the customer. If there is restricted parking on the road where the skip is going to be placed, you will need to pay for the resident͛s bay suspension with your local authority.

The planning application cost for a permitted development application is £226. We are paying this for you. Any additional submission is £226 which you pay, on top of a pre-agreed fee for re-drafting the drawings.

If you supply the planning drawings without structural working drawings, we will still need to come out and measure the house with an architectural survey, in which case there is no money off, as we will need to reproduce the drawings from scratch. If you have all the planning, structural, working drawings already produced and made available as a .DWG file, we can take out the £800 we have provisioned for the architectural work.

Yes, insulation will be cleared and disposed of, and new will be laid. We will also carry out the necessary plumbing work.

Yes.

Yes, we will demolish and remove all that is necessary for us to be able to complete your loft conversion to the specification agreed.

The client is responsible for clearing the loft of all items prior to opening up. If you plan to throw out just a bit of stuff you are welcome to use the skip, if there is a lot of stuff to throw out we can lay on an additional skip for you to use. A 6-yard skip will cost approximately £345.

These are things we need to do or spend on in order to be in a position that we may start the physical build. Things such as building control, scaffolding, permits, waste disposal, port-a-loo to name a few.

It will be added if building control make it mandatory or if you request it as an additional piece of work.

We will bond the wall back up ready for the decorating, and if any exploratory holes are made in the ceiling for rodding cables, these will be patched.

You will have the same 3 tradesmen every day from start to finish. Additional workers will come for other parts such as stair fitting. Working hours are Mon-Sat 08.00-17.00 where 13.00-17.00 on Saturday are designated “quiet hours”.

No finished flooring means it will be left ready for you to either carpet or lay wood flooring. We can price you for the latter should you opt for it.

The tin hat is expensive by vital. We have had clients go without the tin hat in the past in order to save money, which I completely understand, but doing so is a false economy. It can rain anytime even at the height of a hot summer, and if it does the only thing between your home and a downpour is the tin hat. So, of all the things we could do for you, giving you the free tin hat us the best freebie – it means the house is protected from the elements and means once we start the loft, we don͛t leave until the last screw is in.

If we have agreed a start date and the team arrive and access for some reason is not given, then we will incur the day rates of each tradesman on site which we will pass to you.

We always keep work areas tidy, but a level of dust will be inevitable as we are building an entire new floor.

Yes, in this situation we would not take any photographs of the outside of your property or any photographs with your personal items on display. What we would ask however is whether we may take a few photographs of the empty room/s and use them. You will appreciate how valuable it is in the decision-making process for people, if they can see a recent and local loft conversion that has already been done by us.

We go one better. Replacing the doors through the house to fire-check doors is one way to meet fire regulations. Instead we will be fitting hard-wired, interlinked smoke alarms throughout the house. Hard wired to ground, first and loft landing, and radio-linked to every other habitable room from there –so now if there is a fire in the middle of the night, everyone will hear about it and be able to get out. This method meets building regulations. It is a little more work for us, but we͛d rather spend that time to know that our customers are safe. On the new loft floor itself, where brand new doors will be fitted, these will of course be fire-checked. Should the Building Control Inspector ask for individual doors to be replaced, we would charge you just the labour to hang the new door you supply.

We provide an expert loft decoration service for those that would like it, and a quote is available upon request. All rooms will be left skim ready should you choose to decorate yourselves.

Two weeks from the end of the build we will email you an official snagging sheet. We will ask you to walk through the whole loft towards the end of the job and write down a list of things, if any, you want done (E.G. filling holes etc.). We will then check off everything on this list and upon doing so, ask you for final payment. That way you are in control of the funds and only release final payment once you are completely happy.

Yes. You can have electric underfloor heating to your en suite. Or we can extend the wet-delivery underfloor heating to the entire loft. In order for this, we would need to carry out a full plumbing survey of what you currently have and how much work is needed to adapt the system, so it is suitable for wet-delivery underfloor.