Somerville College Oxford

Inspection to establish overall condition for compliance and maintenance of 14no residential properties. Preparation and /or update of existing floor plans, Outline design proposals with comment on likely success to obtain statutory consent and budgetary advice on likely implementation costs. Advice from our residential letting and sales department on likely uplift in value for the proposals.

Our in house residential letting team had over many years, let many of the properties for the college between new staff appointments to the college.

The college when to competitive tender to ask for maintenance and feasibility to update the buildings and our building consultancy team secured the instruction in summer 2018.

We inspected each property and made comment on the general condition of the exterior, interior and provided an overview on the condition of the building services and grounds. We highlighted areas of concern and provided a budget for catch up maintenance. We commented on whether the properties were located where staff would be willing to live and commented whether subdivision would be desirable to create flats out of houses or not.

We updated/prepared existing floor plans and provided at least one sketched overlay for each property on what we considered to be desirable work such as open plan dining/ kitchen areas, en-suites, possible loft conversions with an approximation of implementation costs as well a comment on the likelihood of obtaining conservation/ planning approval.