Rooflights and skylights in Croydon, town centre to conservation street

Croydon is part of the London Borough of Croydon. The town had 192,064 residents at the 2011 census, and the borough as a whole had 384,837.

Those are large numbers for a place where we normally talk about villages. The size changes the shape of the work. A village has a handful of roof types and a single parish council. A borough of this size has every kind of roof and several layers of rules, and none of them can be read from the pavement. So the first job on any Croydon enquiry is to find out what kind of building you have and which rules apply to it.

We work from Crawley, the home of Clear Skylights Crawley, and Croydon is 21.7 road miles away, well inside the 30 miles we cover. A survey here is a planned visit with the tape, the ladder and the right questions already written down. Our page for Purley covers the next town along.

Croydon has about 20 conservation areas, and its Local Plan heritage appendix lists a further 25 local heritage areas. Whether your roof sits inside either is the first question to settle, before any glass is chosen.

The conservation areas named in the research include Central Croydon, Church Street Croydon, Croydon Minster, Chatsworth Road, Croham Manor Road, Harold Road, The Waldrons, South Norwood and Upper Norwood Triangle. The local heritage areas include Addiscombe College Estate, Beatrice Avenue and Birdhurst Road. Those names are a sample from the lists, not the whole of them.

The status of any house is checked for the address, because a boundary can run down the middle of a street and the rule for the front slope can differ from the one for the rear. Checking means reading the council's own mapping and the Local Plan appendix, then confirming with the planning department where the answer is unclear.

The London and Croydon Railway began operating in 1839, and the line turned the town into a commuter destination. That sentence from the research is the most useful single fact for anyone listening for noise here, because it tells you the railway is part of the town's fabric and not an afterthought.

A rail corridor makes a particular kind of sound. It is intermittent, with a peak as each train passes and a gap in between, and it can carry a low rumble that travels through the structure as well as through the air. A loft bedroom whose slope faces the line will hear the peaks. A room at the back may hear almost nothing.

That is why the first thing we do at a survey is stand in the room and listen. We note which direction the sound comes from and when it comes. The research names no streets beside the line, so the survey is what settles it for your house, and the result is written into the quiet spec that comes with the quote.

Croydon sits north of the North Downs, and the River Wandle rises here. The geography is gentle, and it adds nothing unusual to a rooflight specification on its own. Rain falls on a flat rooflight here as hard as it does anywhere in the south-east.

Rain on glass is a sound problem for every flat or shallow-pitched unit. Water hitting a pane makes the pane move, and the movement is heard as drumming in the room below. The heavier the rain and the larger the pane, the louder it is.

The table below sets the main choices against what they do for a flat-roofed room. It is general physics and general regulation, not a price list.

The planning authority here is the London Borough of Croydon. That single fact governs what you can do to the slope and who you ask, and it is a different council from the county and district councils across most of our area.

A rooflight in an ordinary house can be permitted development, but that depends on the house, the slope and whether the property sits in a protected area. Flats and maisonettes have different rights from houses, and a building in a conservation area or a listed building has a tighter set again. We check the position for your address and tell you what we find before any work is booked.

Building Regulations are a separate test and apply wherever you live. New and replacement roof glazing has to meet current standards for thermal performance under Part L, for safe access and breakage under Part K, for fire under Part B and for ventilation under Part F where the room needs it. We install to current Building Regulations and handle the Building Control notification where the work is notifiable. Our guide to Building Regulations for rooflights sets out each part.