A town of listed buildings
Swale Borough Council counts 349 listed buildings in and around Faversham, most of them inside the Faversham Town conservation area. That area grew on 1 May 2024. It now takes in Athelstan Road and Ethelbert Road, Canute Road and Kingsnorth Road, plus Gordon Square and Macknade Avenue. If you live on one of those streets, the rules for your house changed that day.
In a conservation area, a boiler flue on a wall or roof facing the road needs planning permission. Faversham adds a second layer. Its Article 4 direction, in force since 2007, covers most of the Victorian and Edwardian houses in the conservation area and controls front doors, windows, roofs and porches. So in the old town we plan the flue to the side or back from the start, and on a listed building nothing changes without listed building consent. We'll tell you which applies before we quote.
Terraces in town, combis that fit
Four in ten homes in Faversham are terraced, and in Abbey ward it's nearly half. A combi is usually the right answer in a two- or three-bedroom terrace with one bathroom. Where the old system has a tank in the loft and a cylinder in the airing cupboard, we can take both out and give you the cupboard back, or keep the cylinder if you'd rather have stored hot water.
Oil out in the villages
Step out of town and the picture changes. About a quarter of homes in the Boughton and Selling area aren't on mains gas, and east of the town, round Ospringe, nearly half the houses are detached. That's oil country. We're OFTEC registered, so we install and service oil boilers and check the tank, the bund and the supply line while we're there.
Hard water from the North Downs
Faversham's water comes from South East Water, not Southern Water. Its 2025 report for the North Downs zone puts hardness at about 292 mg/l of calcium carbonate, which it rates hard. That's over the 200 mg/l point where a combi should get a scale reducer.