Rented homes and the Article 4 Direction
Beeston sits next to the University of Nottingham's main campus, and student housing is a big enough issue that Broxtowe Borough Council brought in an Article 4 Direction on 26 March 2022. In parts of Beeston and Beeston Rylands, turning a house into a small HMO for three to six people now needs planning permission. For landlords, that kind of change can come with fire safety work, and plasterboard plays a big part in it. Fire-rated board on ceilings and around the stairs is often part of what a licensing officer or building control asks for. We fit and skim boards to the specification you have been given; the specification itself comes from them, not from us.
St John's Grove, Cottage Grove and the land-society streets
Beeston's older housing includes St John's Grove, where the Beeston Land Society bought the land in 1878 and split it into 28 plots, and Cottage Grove, with Victorian and Edwardian houses on Park Road and Grove Avenue. Both are now conservation areas. The Imperial Park and Bellevue Park estates were also built by land societies from the late 1870s and 1881. Houses of that age were built with lath and plaster ceilings, and a ceiling that has had more than a century of footsteps on the floor above can lose its grip. Boarding over it with screws long enough to reach solid joists, or stripping it back where it is loose, gives a sound ceiling again.
Rylands, Cliftonside and Meadow Farm
South of the railway, Beeston Rylands has its own mix. Cliftonside's 900 houses date from 1934 to 1939, and interwar homes like these can have either lath and plaster or early plasterboard overhead. Meadow Farm, built in 1970, is made up of timber-framed semi-detached houses, where the inner face of the outside walls is plasterboard on timber studs. Boarding in a timber-framed house means fixing into the studs, keeping the vapour control layer behind the board intact, and sealing any hole cut through it. Over in Chilwell, the Inham Nook estate dates from the 1950s, when plasterboard ceilings were more usual than lath, so the work there is more likely to be re-fixing, overboarding after a leak, or boarding new walls.
Talk to us
Call 07877 353120 or use the enquiry form, and let us know whether the property is your own home or a let, as that can change which boards are needed. Photos of the ceiling or wall, and of the room above if there has been a leak, help us give you a clear answer. We work seven days a week, 7am to 5pm.
