Skylight and rooflight fitting in Hendy

Hendy, in Welsh Yr Hendy, is a village on the border between Carmarthenshire and Swansea. It lies on the Afon Gwili, just across the River Loughor from Pontarddulais.

A tinplate works was established here in 1870, and the village grew round it. Forty houses were built by the owners to accommodate the workers, though some workers built their own homes, which eventually led to Hendy becoming a sizeable village. Many a place that grew like that holds houses from more than one period, and a rooflight suited to one may not suit its neighbour.

Hendy has its people, too. John Jenkins, who lived from 1872 to 1936, was a Welsh poet and theologian known by the bardic name Gwili. Dai Hiddlestone, who lived from 1890 to 1973, was a Welsh international rugby union player and played for Neath RFC. In 2020 a trail opened around the old cricket ground.

Setting out from Swansea, you cover 9.55 miles north-west to reach Hendy, an easy trip for a survey. We also fit in nearby Llangennech and Grovesend.

Hendy grew from a works, from the owners' forty houses and from homes that workers built themselves, and it holds houses that were put up in different years by different hands. Each roof, whether pitched or flat, gets a look before any product is chosen, and that look matters more than the age of the street.

Because the village sits at a county line, the first practical question is which council an application goes to. For Hendy it is Carmarthenshire County Council. A house a short way over the border belongs to a different authority, so the address decides, and a rooflight job in this part of the world is worth checking against the right council's pages.

The planning rules themselves come from Wales, not from the county. Whether a house can add a rooflight without applying turns on the conditions in our planning guide for Welsh homes. The same guide covers the protected land where an application is needed: conservation areas, the Gower AONB, Bannau Brycheiniog National Park and World Heritage Sites. Gower's AONB does not take in Hendy.

A flat or a maisonette starts from a different place, because neither carries householder permitted development rights, which is a point the Welsh Government explains on its flats and maisonettes page. A house can lose its rights as well: a council may make an Article 4 direction, and the permission first granted for a house can include a condition that removes them.

When the house is listed, a rooflight that would alter its character as a building of special interest needs listed building consent. The Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2023 governs it, local planning authorities process it, and it covers fixtures and fittings inside as well as out. Cadw's page on listed building consent has the detail.

Building Regulations are a separate track. Because glazing like this is a controlled fitting, putting it in is building work, and a new roof opening will generally need approval. Where the job is notifiable, we handle the notification through local authority building control or a registered building control approver.

An address near the margin of a rule can be put to the council for a Lawful Development Certificate, which sets the answer down formally. The certificate takes a little patience, and it stays useful as a record when the house is sold.

Two kinds of building control body operate in Wales: the council's own service, and a private registered building control approver. The choice between them is yours. The Building Safety Regulator keeps a register of the private firms and oversees them, and the Welsh Ministers hold that role for the council teams.

A hall with no outside wall can be the room that wants daylight most. A sun tunnel serves it: light enters at a roof dome, travels down a mirrored tube and fans out from the ceiling diffuser. Dome and tube need only the loft space above. The sun tunnel room guide compares the likely candidates.

For a loft room or back bedroom the answer is a roof window. In Wales a new or replacement roof window should reach 1.4 W/m²K or Window Energy Rating Band B. If the room is a bedroom in the loft, escape comes into it, and a roof window can be the way out; the Building Regulations guide has the conditions, and we check at the survey.

An extension with a flat roof can take a flat roof rooflight, and the Welsh figure for a rooflight is 2.2 W/m²K. Where the kerb is supplied with the rooflight as one assembly, that limit covers the kerb as well. A roof lantern is a taller thing, and a lantern joining an existing flat roof normally brings a planning application with it. On a newly built extension, the council gets asked.

A loft conversion has one Wales-only wrinkle. Where an existing house already has an automatic fire suppression system, the sprinkler system should be extended and re-certified to cover the altered, extended and added areas. It is a Building Regulations point for a loft room with a new roof window, and it comes up when the survey looks at the house as a whole.

Where a unit has clouded inside its sealed panes, misted rooflights explains the replacement. No figure is given before the free survey. The fixed written quote comes next, and when the job is finished the ten-year guarantee on our workmanship is handed over in writing. Call 01792 929062 or use the form to book.