Complete new build homes across Surrey, from a cleared plot to the day you turn the key. Architects, designers and skilled craftsmen under one roof, so your home is delivered exactly as drawn.
A new build is the purest form of what we do. A plot, a vision, and one team to carry it from the first line on the drawing to the keys in your hand.
We take on complete new homes across Surrey: single dwellings, replacement houses, self builds and small developments. From the moment the ground is broken, everything is handled in-house or by trusted trades we have worked with for years, all pulling in one direction.
You can bring your own architect and drawings, or we can introduce you to designers we know and trust. Either way, we build to the drawing, keep you informed at every stage, and hand over a home finished to a standard we are proud to put our name to.
Thirty years of building in Surrey has taught us that the best projects are the calm ones. Clear pricing, a tidy site, honest updates, and no surprises. That is how we like to work, and it is why so much of what we do comes by personal recommendation.
We have been putting up homes in this corner of Surrey since 1996. Here is what that adds up to.
It all begins below the surface. Site clearance, foundations, drainage and services are set out precisely, because a home is only ever as good as the ground it stands on.
Superstructure, steelwork, brickwork and roof. This is where the shape of your home appears, built exactly to the architect's drawings with a level of care you can see in every course of brick.
First fix, second fix, plaster, kitchens, bathrooms and the fine details that make a house a home. We snag it properly, walk it with you, and only hand over when it is right.
You will always know which stage your home is at, what is happening next, and who is on site that week.
We clear the plot, set out the footprint from the drawings and dig the foundations. Drainage and incoming services go in at the same time, and building control inspects before anything is covered over.
Brick, block, steels and floors take the house up to eaves, then the roof, windows and doors go on. Once the shell is watertight the inside work carries on whatever the Surrey weather is doing.
Wiring, pipework and insulation go in first, then plastering, joinery, kitchens and bathrooms. Decoration and flooring follow once everything has been tested and signed off.
We snag the house ourselves before you ever see a list, then walk every room with you. You get the certificates, the warranties, the paperwork and the keys.
A plot is won or lost on things you cannot see from the pavement. This is the work that happens before anybody prices a brick.
Two plots on the same road can be tens of thousands of pounds apart before a single brick is laid, and the difference is rarely the view. It is the ground, the levels, the access and where the drains run. If you are still deciding whether to buy, or you own the land and are working the scheme up with your architect, an honest look at the practical side is worth having early, while changing your mind is still cheap.
We walk the plot with you and start with the dull questions. How does a lorry get in, and where does it turn round. Is there room for a materials store, a skip and welfare, or does everything have to be delivered to order. How far does the ground fall from one corner to the other, because a fall of much more than a metre usually brings retaining, stepped foundations and a great deal more spoil to cart away. What is growing on it, since mature trees change foundation depths and some carry preservation orders. Where is the nearest public sewer, and does the plot have a water supply already or are we starting from nothing.
Then we read what comes with the land. The planning consent and every condition attached to it, restrictive covenants on the title, rights of way, shared drives, and any boundary that will need a party wall notice. Conditions are the part people skip. A consent can require materials to be approved before work starts, a construction management plan to be agreed, or an ecology survey that can only be carried out at certain times of year. Each one has a lead time. Found at the survey they cost nothing. Found in the week you hoped to start, they cost weeks.
We build right across the county, so if you are weighing up more than one site there is a fair chance we have worked in both places already. The towns and villages we cover are all listed if you want to check.
Gate widths, turning room, overhead cables and where a lorry can safely stand. Tight access does not stop a build, but it has to be priced honestly rather than discovered.
A sloping plot means cut and fill, retaining walls and stepped footings. We survey levels properly so the earthworks are a line in the quote, not a surprise in month two.
Species, spread and distance set foundation depths on clay. Protected trees, hedgerows, bats and nesting birds all have their own rules and their own seasons.
Planning conditions, covenants, rights of way and drainage easements. We read them before we price, because they decide what can be built and when it can start.
Foundations are the one part of a new home nobody ever sees, and the one part nobody should ever have to think about again.
Surrey is not one kind of ground. The chalk of the North Downs behaves nothing like the London Clay to the north of it, or the Weald clay and greensand to the south, and a single plot can have made ground, an old pond or a filled pit sitting quietly under the topsoil. Clay shrinks and swells with the seasons and with whatever is growing in it, which is why foundation depths near mature trees are set by species and distance rather than by habit.
So before we price groundworks we want evidence rather than an opinion. On most plots that means trial holes dug at the corners of the footprint, so the strata and the water level can be seen rather than assumed. On anything doubtful, a site investigation with boreholes and a soil report gives the structural engineer what they need to design the foundation properly. It is a modest cost early set against a large unknown later, and the report belongs to you.
The engineer designs the foundation and building control inspects it. Our job is to build it exactly as drawn and to have the trench open when the inspector arrives. These are the types you are most likely to hear discussed.
Connections are the likeliest thing to hold up a new build, because not one of them is in your gift or ours.
Every new home needs somewhere for the foul water to go, somewhere for the rainwater to go, and a supply of electricity, water and usually gas. On a plot in an established street that can be straightforward. On a field, a paddock or the bottom of a long garden it can be the single largest variable in the job, so we get it settled early and in writing.
Foul drainage normally means a connection to the public sewer, applied for through the water company. If a public sewer already crosses the plot, a build over or divert agreement has to be in place before anything is built near it, and that takes time. Where there is no sewer within reach, a package treatment plant or a septic tank is designed to suit the number of bedrooms and the way the outfall discharges, in line with the general binding rules for the site.
Rainwater is kept separate. The order of preference is to soak it away on the plot, then to a watercourse, and only as a last resort to a sewer. A soakaway is sized from a percolation test rather than a guess, because clay that will not take water makes a well built soakaway useless. Where the ground will not soak, we look at attenuation, a controlled discharge, permeable paving or land drainage, and the planning conditions on the consent often decide it for us.
The utility applications go in at the very start of the job. Each one goes to a different organisation, each has its own lead time and its own charge, and those charges are quoted by the provider and paid to them rather than to us. Getting the applications away in week one is the cheapest thing anybody does on a new build.
The same four stages set out earlier, opened up into the eight blocks of work a programme is actually built from.
Every plot runs slightly differently, but the order almost never changes, and knowing the order tells you what your money is buying in any given month. Photographs of these stages on real Surrey sites are on our recent work page if you would rather see it than read it.
Nothing visible happens and a great deal gets done. Structural calculations and the foundation design are finalised, building control is appointed and notified, the warranty is registered, utility applications go in, party wall notices are served where a boundary needs them, and the programme and payment stages are agreed in writing.
Hoarding or fencing, welfare, a temporary supply, a store and a safe route in for deliveries. Then site clearance, any tree work already agreed, and the topsoil stripped and stacked. The footprint is set out from the drawings and checked before anything is dug.
Excavation, inspection of the open trench, concrete, and blockwork up to damp proof course level. Below ground drainage is laid and tested at the same time, and the ground floor slab or beam and block floor goes in with its insulation and membranes.
The walls go up in brick and block or timber frame, with steels, lintels, cavity insulation and wall ties as specified. Floor joists go in at first floor level, scaffolding rises with the build, and by the end of this stage the shape of the house is finally on the plot.
Roof structure, felt, battens and tiles, then fascias, gutters and downpipes. Windows and external doors follow, and the moment the last one is in, the house is weathertight and the inside work stops caring what the Surrey weather is doing.
Wiring, pipework, waste runs, heating, ventilation and any underfloor pipework, followed by insulation, stud walls and boarding. Building control looks at the insulation and services before they are hidden, and then the house is plastered and left to dry.
Screeds and floors, joinery, staircase, doors and skirtings, kitchen, bathrooms, sanitaryware, sockets, switches, lights and the heating brought to life. Tiling, decoration and the fine details follow in a set order so nothing finished gets walked over twice.
Drives, paths, patios, boundaries and planting outside while the air test, commissioning and final inspections are carried out inside. We snag the house ourselves, put it right, then walk every room with you and hand over the keys, the certificates and the file.
Two quotes for the same house can be far apart simply because one of them left things out. This is how ours is built up.
Our quotation is for the building work: everything needed to take your approved drawings and turn them into a finished, tested, signed off house. It is written out stage by stage so you can see where the money sits, and anything we have assumed or left out is written down as an assumption or an exclusion rather than left for you to find later. Where a kitchen, sanitaryware or flooring has not been chosen yet, we put a clearly labelled allowance in and adjust it once you have picked, up or down.
If you are comparing our figure against somebody else's, read our guide on how to choose a builder in Surrey before you decide. It sets out what a quotation should contain before it can be compared fairly, how staged payments ought to be structured, and the checks worth making on any firm before you let them start. Twenty minutes there tends to save a lot of money later. The rest of our homeowner guides cover costs, planning permission and loft conversions in the same plain terms.
Two things worth knowing about the money. First, work that cannot be foreseen, which on a new build almost always means the ground, is handled as a written variation before it is carried out, with the cost and the effect on the programme set out so you can decide. Second, building a new dwelling is treated differently to extending an existing one for VAT purposes, and in many cases a contractor's work on a genuinely new home is zero rated. It is worth confirming your own position with your accountant or with HMRC early, because it changes the budget noticeably.
As a rough test of whether a budget is realistic, new build work in Surrey is commonly discussed somewhere in the region of £2,400 to £3,400 per square metre for the building work alone, with higher specification homes sitting above that and simple, straightforward shapes below it. That is general market guidance rather than our price list, and it takes no account of your ground, your access or your drawings. A real figure for your plot follows a site visit and a written quotation.
General ranges, not promises. Size, access, ground conditions and planning move every one of them.
People usually ask about time on site, but the calendar starts long before that. Design and planning are the slowest part of most new builds and the part a builder has least control over. The figures below are the ranges we see on ordinary Surrey plots, and some of the stages overlap in practice, so adding them all up gives you a longer answer than reality.
What you get from us is a programme written for your house rather than a range copied off a page, and an update every week telling you what has been done, what is next and whether anything has moved. If something slips, you hear it from us first. A realistic date and a written quotation both follow a visit to the plot, and that visit costs you nothing.
From start to finish I.C Developments were amazing. We love our new home and have passed your details on to our neighbours.
from the soil in the ground to the keys in your hand
