Kitchen renovation in Petts Wood

Plan the kitchen around movement, storage and services.

Start with the kitchen renovation brief

Map preparation, cooking, washing and storage before choosing cabinet fronts. Measure clearances with doors and drawers open, and decide which existing walls, floors and details belong in the finished room.

Coordinate the cabinetry with water, drainage, extraction, electrics and lighting. Confirm appliance dimensions and access for installation before the layout is signed off; structural alterations need their own design and approval checks.

The local building context

Petts Wood grew in the late 1920s and 1930s on the garden suburb principle. The 2025 Chislehurst Road appraisal credits Basil Scruby, who with his architect Leonard Culliford drew up a masterplan for the roads, amenities and plot sizes that remain largely unchanged, and who used covenants on the plots to control building lines, roof heights and materials; roofs then had to be English tiles of natural clay or stone at a pitch of at least 45 degrees. Station Square was laid out in 1928, and building spread from the east side to the west.

The Local Plan’s Petts Wood Area of Special Residential Character holds around 1,500 detached and semi-detached homes on about 112 hectares, bounded by the railway to the north and the Chislehurst Road conservation area to the north-east, and excluding Station Square. Its prevailing 1930s design remains largely intact. The plan singles out front roof lines largely untouched by roof extensions, the symmetry between pairs of houses, low boundaries and visible front gardens, and rear gardens often over 120ft; some houses are by Noel Rees, who designed every building in The Chenies.

The conservation areas span four decades. The Chenies was designated in June 1982 and Chislehurst Road in May 1989, where detached houses stand in large plots set well back from the road; most roofs there are hipped, and red clay tiles modelled on Kent peg tiles cover more of them than any other material. Station Square followed in January 1995 after a local campaign, and includes the Grade II Daylight Inn. The Covert, in the south, with Noel Rees’s neo-Tudor houses, and The Thrifts, in the north-west, mainly semi-detached houses against ancient woodland, were both designated on 4 January 2022.

Local design and consent context

The design guide calls Petts Wood’s ASRC the largest in the borough. As a Local Plan designation, separate from the conservation areas, it falls under Policy 44, which asks development to respect, enhance and strengthen its special and distinctive qualities. The plan’s guidelines for these areas rule out backland development, ask new work to take account of existing front and rear building lines, ask for mature trees and landscaping to be kept wherever possible, and resist proposals that significantly increase hard surfacing in front of houses unless satisfactory landscaping comes with them. The guide names extensions and replacement houses as the main development pressure.

Three directions cover the whole ASRC. An immediate direction dated 2 January 2021 removes Part 1 Class AA, adding storeys to a house, and was confirmed in July 2021. A second, sealed on 15 March 2021, removes Part 20 Classes A, AA, AB, AC and AD, new homes built on top of existing buildings, from 15 March 2022. A third, confirmed on 24 June 2022, removes Part 1 Classes B and C, roof enlargements and other roof alterations, from 19 July 2022, replacing an earlier front-slope direction; a matching Class C direction covers the Chislehurst Road conservation area.

Boundaries have their own directions. A direction in effect from 16 June 2016 removes rights for gates, fences, walls and other enclosures, listed by the council for the ASRC, The Chenies and Chislehurst Road; Station Square has one for boundaries and temporary uses from the same date; and The Chenies has a 2012 direction on roof alterations, including roof lights visible from the highway. The Covert and The Thrifts appraisals say roof and boundary directions are in place there. Petts Wood Town Centre also has a 2023 direction, modified by the Secretary of State, on turning commercial premises into homes. Check the plans for the exact address.

Access and site planning

Any skip placed on the public highway needs Bromley’s temporary highway licence, for which only a skip company on the council’s register may apply, and each licence lasts two weeks. Only on a private road with restricted or controlled public access is no licence needed; where the public may pass along an unadopted highway, one is still required. Scaffolding that obstructs the highway, or a hoarding that reaches the footway or carriageway, needs the council’s consent. Apply for a parking bay suspension no later than three working days before it is needed.

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The Petts Wood area guide · Kitchen renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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