A Bloomsbury refurbishment starts with tenure, not with the mood board. If the home is a leasehold flat in a converted townhouse or a mansion block — which most Bloomsbury homes are — the lease and the freeholder's Licence to Alter set the outer limits of what can be done before any design question is reached. The licence typically controls structural alteration, changes to services on shared risers, and anything touching the demise boundary with the flat next door or below. We read the lease and open the licence conversation at the outset, because on this stock the freeholder's consent, not the council, is usually the gate the whole programme has to pass through.
The single most technical part of a flat refurbishment here is what happens between one flat and the next. Removing an old floor and rebuilding it, or relocating a kitchen or bathroom, changes the acoustic and fire separation to the flat below, and a converted Georgian townhouse rarely started life with the floor build-ups a modern conversion needs. We design a floor make-up that improves impact and airborne sound to the neighbour beneath, maintains or restores fire separation between the two dwellings, and still fits within the tight floor-to-ceiling zone a period room allows. That build-up is often the difference between a licence granted and a licence refused.
Moving wet areas is where drainage and the riser decide the plan. In a mansion block the soil and vent stack, the water riser and any shared plant are fixed positions, and a new kitchen or bathroom has to reach them by a fall that actually works rather than one drawn hopefully on a plan. Relocating a bathroom across a Georgian floor plate can mean pumped drainage, boxed falls that eat ceiling height in the room below, and waterproofing detailed to protect the neighbour. We set the wet areas against the real riser and stack positions first, then plan the rooms around them, because doing it the other way round is how schemes stall at the freeholder's surveyor.
On the single-family townhouses the challenge shifts from separation to fabric. A Georgian townhouse carries an original staircase, cornices, plaster, joinery and fireplaces that may be protected where the building is listed, and are worth respecting even where it is not. Refurbishing across several storeys usually means opening the plan carefully, upgrading services and comfort, and repairing rather than replacing what is original. Where the building is listed, moving or stripping any of that fabric can require listed building consent, so we survey what survives before proposing change. The best townhouse refurbishments read as a careful continuation of the house, not a gutting of it.
Structure runs underneath all of it. Removing a chimney breast, forming a new opening between rooms, or taking out a spine wall in a period property calls for a structural engineer's design and calculations, and on the terraced and converted stock those elements frequently bear into or sit against the party wall shared with the building next door. Building on the line of junction, or excavating within three or six metres of a neighbour's structure, triggers the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, and in a converted house the neighbour may be the flat directly above or below as well as the building alongside. We identify the notifiable parties early so notices do not delay a build that is otherwise ready.
The route we run reflects all of this. We survey the property, read the lease and the listing and conservation position, and settle the tenure and consent strategy before the design is fixed; then we develop the reconfiguration against the acoustic, fire, drainage and structural realities, and produce a drawing set that serves the freeholder's surveyor, building control and, where needed, a listed building consent or planning application in parallel. We do not promise approval or a licence — those rest with the council and the freeholder — but a scheme built on the real constraints is the one most likely to secure both. The result is a Bloomsbury home reworked to modern comfort without picking a fight with its fabric or its neighbours.
