Perrymount Road in Haywards Heath is an 8-storey standalone building constructed entirely in light gauge steel — one of the tallest buildings in the UK delivered as a panellised SFS full build with no primary concrete or hot rolled steel frame.
Most steel framing systems on a building this height sit as infill inside a concrete or hot rolled steel structure. Perrymount Road does not. The light gauge steel frame is the building’s structure, from ground to 8th floor, delivered as factory-assembled panels for We Build in partnership with Frameclad over an 18-week programme.
Why an 8-storey standalone build is significant
Light gauge steel is commonly specified up to around 8 storeys as a load-bearing structure, and this project sits at that ceiling. Reaching it changes the economics of a scheme: no separate primary frame package, no waiting on a concrete programme before the envelope can follow, and substantially lower loads transferred into the foundations than a masonry or concrete equivalent would impose.
It also raises the design bar. In an infill application, the primary frame carries the building and the SFS carries only cladding and wind load. In a full build, every vertical load, every wind moment and every disproportionate collapse requirement is resolved through the light steel itself. That analysis has to be right before the factory cuts a single panel.
Design signed off before fabrication began
The design phase governed this project. BAS Frames and the design team reviewed and signed off every detail before issuing a single fabrication drawing, completing the design in 3 months — not as procedural caution, but because a panellised system converts design certainty into programme speed, and converts design uncertainty into scrapped panels.
The factory manufactures each panel to the approved drawing. Change the drawing afterwards and the panel is wrong: a site team cannot trim it the way they can adjust a stick-built frame. That is the trade-off panellised construction asks a project to accept, and it is why bringing the specialist in before the design is frozen is worth more on this method than on any other.
Early collaboration with Frameclad
BAS Frames worked with Frameclad from the design stage rather than being handed a completed package to install. Involving the fabricator while the design was still open meant panel sizes could be set against what the site could receive and lift, junctions could be detailed once rather than reworked, and the sequence of assembly could be planned into the panel schedule instead of being discovered on site.
On an 8-storey standalone frame, the erection sequence is not a site decision. It is a design output.
The balcony detail
Balconies are among the harder details on a light steel full build. They project beyond the insulated envelope, they carry live load at the point where the structure is most exposed, and they create a thermal path directly out of the building unless the connection is designed to interrupt it.
The team resolved the balcony connections — structurally, thermally and for fire — during the design phase rather than negotiating them on site during erection. That is where a panellised build either saves the programme or loses it.
Factory assembly, rapid site erection
Frameclad manufactured the panels under factory conditions and delivered them directly to site. This is where the 18-week programme comes from: fabrication ran in parallel with groundworks, so the frame began going up as soon as the substructure was ready, and the building reached a weathertight shell far sooner than a comparable traditional build.
Project facts
- Client: We Build
- Location: Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex
- Scope: 8-storey standalone panellised SFS full build
- Partner: Frameclad
- Duration: 18 weeks
- Notable: One of the tallest standalone buildings in the UK built entirely in Steel Frame Systems
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