Skylights and rooflights in Queniborough

Charnwood Borough Council holds the planning pen here. For a house, the 2015 national order gives householders permitted development rights for roof alterations under its Class C, so a rooflight can usually go in without an application, within three physical limits. It must not protrude by more than a hand's width of 150mm. It must not climb past the ridge. A slope that looks sideways may only take obscured glass fixed shut, unless the opening leaf is more than 1.7m above the finished floor.

The planning register puts a Queniborough conservation area on the village centre. When it was designated is not recorded, but the register lists 23 listed buildings inside: Grade I (one), Grade II* (one) and Grade II (twenty-one). Returns from councils can be patchy, so even an apparently clear house is worth checking with Charnwood. A conservation area is not an automatic bar to Class C; only an Article 4 direction removes it, and those are found street by street.

Queniborough Old Hall on Coppice Lane is the grandest roof in the village. It is a Grade II* house of brick, put up in 1675 and 1676 on what was an H-shaped plan, with Swithland slate on a pitched roof. Nobody is fitting a rooflight to a building like that without a long talk with the conservation officer first. But the hall shows what the older village is made of, and it explains why the surveying here is slow and careful: slate that old has seen three centuries of weather and does not forgive a clumsy cut.

What this means in practice is a short sequence. First we look at the roof from the street and from the garden, and note what the covering is. Next we go up into the loft to see the timbers and the underside of the slope, because the opening has to land between rafters and a rooflight that clashes with one means a headache for everybody. Last, we check the house against the register, so the quote that reaches you already knows whether an application, a consent or nothing at all is needed.

Planning permission and Building Regulations are separate matters. Where the job is notifiable, we deal with the building control notification (the council's, or a private approver's), and the paperwork stays with the job.

The old part of Queniborough runs along Main Street, and the houses there are a mix of the 16th to the 20th centuries, some of them thatched. A roof of that age is rarely a single material. A cottage may carry thatch on the front, a slate lean-to behind and tile on a later extension, and each of those wants a different method at the opening. We walk the whole house before we say which slope to use.

Thatch is the one we are most careful about. The covering is laid in a way that depends on its thickness and on how it is fixed, and cutting into it is a job for the person who thatches the house. We do not guess at that. Where the owner would like more light under a thatched roof, the usual first move is to look at the other slopes, an extension or an outbuilding, and keep the thatch itself undisturbed. A sun tunnel through a slate or tiled section can sometimes reach a dark room that the thatch side would never allow.

Brick is the other half of the picture. The Old Hall is built of it, and brick houses of that age often have roofs that have shifted a little: a ridge that dips, a slope that is not quite flat. A rooflight frame is square and the roof is not, so the opening is taken off the roof in several places and the flashing made for the roof as it is today. It is a slower way to work, and it is why the corner of a new frame does not leave a gap.

Slate rooflights have a reputation for being fussy, and it is deserved. The frame sits in a trough of lead or a made-to-fit flashing kit, and each slate beside it must be sound. A conservation rooflight has a narrow sash with one bar down the middle, and it hugs the slope, so from the lane it reads as a gap in the slate and not as an addition. Old brick houses tend to accept that look, so it is where we start.

The newer housing is a gentler job. In 2003 its 972 properties housed 1,878 registered electors, and the 2011 census put the population at 2,326. Those later houses were built to simpler roof shapes with open space in the loft. Part of any survey there is finding out whether the roof is rafter-and-purlin or built from factory trusses, because it decides how wide a roof window can be.

Whatever replaces an old unit must then perform to current Part L. In W/m²K the targets are 1.4 for a roof window and 2.2 for a rooflight, and a roof window can alternatively reach band B for energy rating. You notice the better glass in January.

Queniborough is north-east of Leicester, 7.9 miles by road and a drive of about 14 minutes. Our way in is the A607, the classified road nearest the village. Syston is just over a mile south-west, and Queniborough is counted as part of the Leicester Urban Area because of that closeness. In every other respect it is a village, with its own lanes and its own brook.

The mapping data finds no station on a railway within two kilometres, so everybody who works from here is either on the road or at home. That makes the loft and the landing worth thinking about. Anyone who spends the day in a back bedroom with a laptop knows that a dull room under a sloping ceiling is a poor place to do it. A roof window sets daylight above head height, which is where it is most use for a desk and for a screen without glare.

Out of the village, a public footpath follows Queniborough Brook towards South Croxton. It is a good walk to make a point about orientation: a house at the edge of the village, facing the open land, often has a roof that gets the whole day's light from one side, so a south-facing slope may need glazing that does not overheat the room. We talk about that glass choice, covered in energy-efficient rooflights, at the survey and not afterwards.

For anyone on one of the quieter streets with a bungalow or a dormer, the question is usually the dark middle. A bungalow roof has plenty of slope but the hallway sits under it with no window of its own. A rooflight can be put in over the hall, or a tunnel can be run down from the slope to the ceiling, depending on how much loft is above it.

One practical result is that we never assume a loft is empty. Boarded floors, old water tanks and stored furniture all come out of the question before we measure, and we agree with you beforehand which of them has to move and who moves it. A survey that finds a loft crammed to the rafters is not a problem, just a longer morning, and the fixed quote reflects what we actually saw.

At the survey we also look at the glazing you would live with. A bedroom may want a blind that darkens the room, while a landing wants as much daylight as it can get, and the two call for different specifications. We note the choice against each room and carry it into the written quote.