Flat refurbishment in Woodford Green

Plan the apartment and the shared building together.

Start with the flat refurbishment brief

Start with the lease, floor level, common access and the rooms you want to change. Trace shared drainage and services, identify the floor build-up and establish what the building manager needs before an internal layout is agreed.

Coordinate deliveries, noise, protection of common parts and waste removal with the building arrangements. Keep landlord approvals, design decisions and the construction scope separate so each responsibility is clear.

The local building context

Woodford Green and Woodford Wells conservation areas were designated in October 1970, and Woodford Green was extended in December 1981 to take in Sunset Avenue and Mornington Road, west of the High Road. Woodford Wells lies to the north along the High Road, and the 1993 scheme treats it as a continuation of Woodford Green. The 2007 appraisal places both on a ridge 60 metres above sea level, mainly on London clay, and finds their special quality in long, semi-natural open spaces, mature trees, ponds and narrow, hedged roads.

The 2007 appraisal describes tall, narrow, three-storey brick houses of the late eighteenth century on Inmans Row and the adjoining High Road; late Victorian and Edwardian houses on Broomhill Road between Grange Avenue and Fairfield Avenue, detached, semi-detached and terraced, with some flat conversions; and Mornington Road, which it singles out for its Arts and Crafts houses. In Woodford Wells the stock is more ordinary, mostly detached or semi-detached family houses in their own gardens. Yellow stock brick is common, and older roofs are natural slate or clay tile.

Redbridge’s 2007 appraisal says the boundary with Waltham Forest runs through Woodford Green, and each council has its own Woodford Green Conservation Area. Neither the place name nor an IG8 postcode tells you which council handles applications for a property, or whether it falls in a conservation area or a Local Character Area, is listed, or needs particular consents. Monkhams is also the name of a council ward, which tells you nothing about any of this. Use the council finder for the exact address first. Then ask that council about conservation area and Article 4 coverage, and check the statutory list, your title or lease, and past applications for the property.

Local design and consent context

Redbridge has 16 conservation areas. For Woodford Green and Woodford Wells its web page links two documents: the March 2007 Special Character Appraisal, which the council’s 2013 Woodford Broadway appraisal describes as a joint draft, and the Conservation Area Enhancement Scheme, adopted on 22 April 1993. Read both with their dates in mind, since what the 1993 scheme says about the borough boundary is older than the 2007 appraisal’s account.

Woodford Broadway Conservation Area, first designated in 1981 around The Broadway, has its own appraisal of November 2013. When the area was extended on 18 November 2013 to add the southern Monkhams estate, some properties on the eastern edge of Woodford Green Conservation Area, including the Woodford Wells Sports Club, moved into it. The council’s page links management proposals for Woodford Broadway, but none for Woodford Green or Woodford Wells.

The 2023 list of buildings still includes 2–11 The Terrace, which the 1993 scheme described as mid-nineteenth-century houses, mainly semi-detached, with ironwork porches and hipped slate roofs. The same review removed 17–18 Broomhill Road as heavily altered, so check the current list rather than an older document before treating a house as locally listed.

Access and site planning

On the Redbridge side, a skip needs a council licence unless it stands on your own property, such as a driveway; scaffolding or a hoarding on the public highway needs its own licence, and the scaffold application must be backed by a risk assessment, method statement and the company’s public liability insurance. Materials stored on the road need a licence as well, and all these licences are charged by the complete month. A skip on parking spaces also needs a bay suspension, which the council decides within seven working days. For a Waltham Forest address, ask that council.

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The Woodford Green area guide · Flat refurbishment across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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