Check Who Owns the Loft Before the Dormer

The expensive assumption

Many top-floor owners assume the loft is theirs. On converted townhouses and mansion blocks the roof void often remains freeholder property. Designing a dormer before reading the demise is how design fees buy a freeholder refusal.

Our guide who owns the loft space and the South Kensington loft page put ownership before roofscape.

What to do instead

Send the lease plan, freeholder notes if any, roof and stair photos, and the intended loft use. We confirm demise and the likely planning route before proposed dormers freeze. Fire escape through multi-storey stacks is designed with the loft volume, not after furniture layouts. Our studio prepares one coordinated measured survey and drawing model that serves both the borough planning officer and the freeholder’s building surveyor, backed by in-house structural engineering calculations and specialist Party Wall and Building Regulations support across our group. Where a lease does not yet include the roof void, our early feasibility review gives the leaseholder the exact spatial, structural, and fire-escape facts needed to negotiate a supplemental deed of variation or airspace premium with the freeholder before committing to a full planning and Licence to Alter package.