Flat refurbishment in Greenwich

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

West Greenwich was designated in March 1968 and stretches from the town centre, the pier, the Thames foreshore and Cutty Sark to the station, the Georgian and Victorian housing and the open heath at the edge of Blackheath. Its appraisal, listed by the council as 2013 but written before summer 2010, divides it into five character areas, from the Thames waterfront to Blackheath and the houses on the hill. Crooms Hill opens with an early Georgian terrace of 1721, and Gloucester Circus, designed by Michael Searles, was completed in 1809.

Hyde Vale climbs the escarpment to Blackheath with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century villas and town houses, among them the 1840s linked pairs at Nos 11–35 (odd numbers only) on the council’s local list. Behind St Alfege and north of the railway cutting, the streets are mostly plain Victorian cottages, with Randall Place substantially intact, and Greenwich South Street has Regency villas at Nos 71–85. Yellow London stock brick predominates, with Welsh slate roofs, iron railings set with privet hedges and low stock-brick walls, and granite cobble gutters along the kerbs.

The council’s own lists head most West Greenwich streets SE10 and most Westcombe Park streets SE3, but they disagree on edge streets such as Point Hill, Maze Hill and Dinsdale Road. Westcombe Park Road, Mycenae Road and Beaconsfield Road are split between conservation areas, and Nos 3, 5 and 7 Westcombe Park Road, though locally listed, lie outside the Westcombe Park conservation area. Ward names such as Greenwich Park or Blackheath Westcombe do not settle it either. For any one property, what counts is the council’s conservation map, the national and local heritage lists, the Article 4 pages, the title or lease and the planning record.

Local design and consent context

The Westcombe Park character appraisal and management strategy were adopted in March 2010, eight years after designation. In 2010 the area held 91 locally listed buildings and 19 tree preservation orders. The strategy recommended redrawing the boundary to leave out Restell Close and its blocks of flats, including Woodland Heights and Norfolk House; whether that change was made is not stated, so check the current map.

The West Greenwich appraisal is listed by the council as 2013, but its text predates summer 2010. The council’s 2010 management guidance records that Crooms Hill and the town centre, including St Alfege and Cutty Sark Gardens, lie within the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, and that much of the rest, including Hyde Vale, Royal Hill and the whole of the Heath, falls in its buffer zone. The current lines are on the council’s policies map.

Two West Greenwich directions concern buildings directly. The first, dated 29 April 1993, covers 7–63 (odd) Randall Place and 2–18 (even) Churchfields, mid-nineteenth-century two-storey terraces in yellow stock brick with slate roofs. It brings windows, doors, roofing materials, wall coatings or cladding, chimney pots, satellite dishes, alarm boxes and meter boxes under control on fronts or flanks visible from a public highway. The second, in force from 2002, requires planning permission to apply colour to the front and flank elevations of the town-centre premises listed in the council’s 2016 colour guidance.

Access and site planning

Royal Greenwich licenses the use of its streets. Skip hire companies, not householders, apply for the licence a skip on the road needs, which normally lasts 30 days; a skip on a driveway or front garden needs no licence. Scaffolding and hoardings on a public street or pavement need licences, usually for one calendar month at a time, and building materials on a street or footpath need a licence of their own. Apply for parking bay suspensions 10 working days ahead. On streets that climb the escarpment, such as Hyde Vale, settle skip and delivery positions early.

Continue planning

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

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