Bathroom renovation
across Knightsbridge's two boroughs

Where Cadogan's consent is needed for a leaseholder's proposals, Cadogan says the leaseholder must apply for a Licence to Alter. LEASE advises more generally that, depending on the lease, a leaseholder might need the landlord's permission before any alteration, even once building regulations approval has been given.

Listing reaches inside the room. RBKC says the whole of a listed building, its interior and internal features included, is protected, and its list of changes needing consent takes in re-plastering, taking up floorboards, suspended ceilings, recessed lighting and vents; carrying out such work without consent is a criminal offence. In Westminster, City Plan Policy 44 sets out to protect original or significant detail and historic fabric in listed buildings.

Gov.uk lists a straight swap of bath, WC, basin or sink as exempt from building regulations approval, but not new power or lighting points or circuit changes beside a bath or shower, nor work on a heating system.

Sources: Cadogan: residential customer welcome, LEASE: alterations and home improvements, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: listed buildings explained, Westminster City Plan 2019-2040 (2026, adopted January 2026), GOV.UK: when you don't need building regulations approval

Terraces on the Westminster side typically stand three to five floors high over a lower floor, behind railed lightwells, and Montpelier Square's houses have four storeys and a basement, Westminster's audit records. A bathroom can go on almost any of those floors, but its waste has to reach the drain at the bottom of the house.

The mews behind the main frontages are low, usually two floors, and as wide as the house they once served; the audit picks out the L-shaped mews behind Ennismore Gardens as particularly well kept. In a mews house a new bathroom usually goes on the first floor, above the former coach house.

Mansion flat blocks replaced houses from the late Victorian period, and many surviving houses have since been divided into flats, the audit notes. In either case the bathroom sits on a stack it shares with the homes above and below.

In the artisans' quarter between the formal squares, rooms are compact and a bathroom has to be planned to the centimetre.

Where a bathroom is moved to a new floor, we trace the route of the new waste through the house before design, so it does not cut through decorative ceilings or original joists.

In a house of five floors, water pressure at the top is tested at the first visit, because it decides whether a shower needs a pump and where that pump can be housed quietly.

Source: Westminster City Council: Knightsbridge, Knightsbridge Green and Albert Gate conservation area audit (SPD, adopted 20 April 2009)

A bathroom refit inside the existing walls counts in RBKC's code as Category 3, mainly decorative internal work.

Westminster applies lower noise thresholds to all permitted activities on Saturdays, and no noisy work may take place outside the prescribed hours unless prior consent has been obtained under Section 61 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974.

Sources: Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea: Code of Construction Practice (April 2019), Westminster City Council: Code of Construction Practice (May 2026)

I would like to thank Ross and his team for their consistent commitment to quality and their unerring reliability.

We have worked with Ross and his company many times. They are extremely professional and hardworking individuals who can work under any circumstances. There was no variation to the works.