LABC Building Excellence Awards 2021 winner: Best Residential Extension

More than 750 leading construction industry figures attended the LABC Building Excellence Awards at the Westminster Park Plaza Hotel to acclaim best practise, quality and standards in construction.

These were the first Building Excellence Awards since 2019 following the global pandemic and LABC has revised the awards to focus more on professional skills and competence – dividing the awards into two: ‘people’ and ‘places’.

A panel of industry experts judged a list of the highest quality projects and teams from around England and Wales to showcase solutions to complex technical or construction issues, site constraints, technical innovation and the building control professionalism that leads to safe, sustainable and high quality construction projects.  

LABC is delighted to announce the winner of the Best Residential Extension is the Old Beams, Cleadon, Sunderland.

The judges considered the nature of the project – a large domestic extension that nearly doubled the floor area of the existing house – it was completed with only very minor issues due to the close working relationship with building control which were easily resolved on site with the architect and contractor. The main challenge was the stair to access the loft bedroom where access to the bedroom area was restricted. To overcome this, building control, the design team and the contractor worked together to design an opening through the middle of the existing, defunct chimney breast, reinforced with a small steel frame. This enabled retention of the chimney externally which is an important feature of the house which is in a conservation area.

Congratulating the team, Lorna Stimpson, LABC Chief Executive said,