Flat Refurbishment Architects in London

A flat refurbishment is two projects at once. The design challenge is usually to win light, storage and a better sense of flow from a fixed footprint — opening up living space, reworking a kitchen or bathroom, and improving circulation. The consent challenge is the lease: most significant alterations need the freeholder’s permission through a Licence to Alter, supported by drawings. We run the two in step, so the scheme you fall in love with is also one the freeholder will approve and building control will pass. This refurbishment work sits within our wider flat and apartment architecture service, which covers flat projects of every kind.

Flats play by different rules from houses. There are no permitted development rights, so external changes generally need planning permission, while most internal, non-structural alterations do not — but the lease almost always does control them. Crucially, you typically do not own the structure or the external walls of the building, only the space demised to you, so removing or altering structure is rarely something you can simply decide to do. We read the lease and the building alongside the design, so what we propose is actually within your rights to carry out.

For anything beyond cosmetic work, the freeholder’s formal consent — a Licence to Alter — is the gateway, and it runs to its own process and timetable. The freeholder, often through a managing agent and a surveyor, reviews the proposal on the strength of the drawings and specification provided; a vague submission invites questions, conditions and delay. We prepare a clear consent pack designed around what a freeholder’s surveyor looks for, align it with any planning required for external works, and present it so the decision is straightforward — though the freeholder’s timescale ultimately sits outside our control.

The issues that cause the worst leasehold disputes nearly all involve the flat below. Floors have to manage both impact and airborne sound under Approved Document E, and leases frequently require that acoustic performance is not worsened — or is improved — when floors come up. Moving a bathroom or kitchen so that a wet area sits over a neighbour’s living space raises both noise and the risk of a leak, which is why those rooms are kept in sensible positions and tanked properly. We design the floor build-ups, acoustic isolation and waterproofing deliberately, because these are exactly the points a freeholder and a neighbour will scrutinise.

A flat refurbishment still has to satisfy building control. Fire safety in flats is taken seriously — protected escape through the flat and the common parts, fire-rated doors and proper fire-stopping under Approved Document B. Any structural alteration needs a structural engineer’s design and the freeholder’s consent, and where it affects a wall shared with a neighbouring flat the Party Wall etc. Act can apply. We prepare the building regulations package for construction and the Licence to Alter drawings for the freeholder as one coordinated set, and work alongside surveying specialists where party wall or wider leasehold advice is needed.

A flat refurbishment that ignores the lease is only half a project. Most long leases require freeholder consent for structural openings, wet-room moves, kitchen relocations, window changes and floor build-up alterations. Purely cosmetic decoration usually does not. We read the lease restrictions against your brief before the layout is frozen, so the preferred plan is one a freeholder surveyor can support. The design then produces both the living layout you want and the Licence to Alter drawings the managing agent will actually review.

Where external change is proposed — a balcony enclosure, window replacement on a street elevation, a roof terrace — planning permission may sit beside the licence. Internal-only schemes more often run on freeholder consent plus building regulations. Getting that map right stops owners paying for a full planning set they do not need, or starting work with planning alone and breaching the lease.

Changing floors, ceilings or party walls in a mansion block or converted house engages neighbours above and below. Acoustic upgrade when hard floors replace carpet, fire compartmentation when walls move near escape routes, and structural design when load-bearing partitions come out are not optional extras — they are the difference between a consentable scheme and a stalled surveyor query. We coordinate structural and, where needed, acoustic input into the technical drawings so the freeholder pack and the building regulations drawings describe the same construction.

Services are equally tight: soil stacks, risers and extract routes are shared. Moving a bathroom often means proving drainage falls and waterproofing to a standard the freeholder’s surveyor recognises. We treat wet rooms and kitchens as technical rooms first, finishes second.

A typical sequence is: measured survey of the flat; option layouts tested against light, storage and lease constraints; preferred option drawn for Licence to Alter; freeholder process running while building regulations detail is prepared; then a tender package so two or three contractors price the same specification. Skipping the measured survey or pricing from a sketch plan is how flat projects overrun. We keep one model of the flat so freeholder, building control and contractor information stay aligned as the scheme develops.

If you are buying, a short pre-purchase review of what the lease and structure allow can be more valuable than a full design commission. If you already own, bring the lease, any previous licences, and a simple room-by-room brief — that is enough to scope the first fixed-fee stage.

A surprising number of London flats sit inside buildings that carry their own statutory protections, and those controls run alongside the lease rather than replacing it. If the building is listed, works that affect its special interest need listed building consent, and that reaches internal work: removing partitions in a converted house, stripping out joinery or fireplaces, or changing the plan form of a mansion-block flat can all engage it even where no planning permission would otherwise be required. A Licence to Alter does not stand in for the council's consent, and the council's consent does not stand in for the licence; both need to be in place before work starts. Conservation-area status does not change whether permission is needed for external work on a flat, because a flat has no householder permitted development rights anywhere; what it changes is how the application is judged, so window replacement on a visible elevation, new rooflights or a roof terrace are held to a higher standard of match and justification than the same work on an undesignated street. We check the building's status at the outset because it shapes the drawing set, the level of justification needed and the realistic timetable, and our conservation area work informs how those schemes are presented.

The Licence to Alter process looks different depending on who holds the freehold. In a purpose-built block with an institutional freeholder, applications usually pass through a managing agent to a surveyor, with set requirements, an undertaking for fees and a formal licence at the end. In a converted house held on a share of freehold, consent is still required, because owning a share of the freehold company does not release you from the lease's covenants, and the temptation is to rely on a neighbourly nod instead. An unrecorded consent tends to surface years later, when a buyer's solicitor asks for the licence and there is nothing to produce, so we advise documenting even friendly approvals properly.

Where a right-to-manage company or a head lease sits between you and the freeholder, who actually handles the application can shift, and where the freeholder is absent or unresponsive the consent route needs careful thought before any commitment to build. We establish who the consenting parties are during the lease review, and our estate and freeholder consents work covers the more complicated ownership structures.