Flat
refurbishment
in Fulham, SW6
Architects, Engineers, Surveyors & Builders Under One Roof.
One Studio. One Contract. One Team.
Hampstead Chartered Surveyors & Building ConsultancyFulham flats are often floors of a divided house, like Walham Grove's semi-basemented houses with separate basement entrances. Below ground, Policy DC11 bars new basement flats in Flood Zone 3 without a safe way out.
Fulham is classic Victorian family London, strongly house-led, but it has its flats too. The riverside towards Hurlingham adds larger villas and mansion buildings, Hurlingham Road and Peterborough Road carry bay-fronted terraces and mansion flats, and the smaller Edwardian cottages off the Fulham Road have often been converted into apartments. Conservation areas protect the best Victorian streets and the riverside, so external change is guided closely.
The first step in a Fulham flat refurbishment is to separate the internal work from anything visible or leasehold-controlled. Inside, assess changes to layout, services and finishes against the lease, listing and applicable Building Regulations; external and shared-building alterations need separate permission checks, with structure, acoustics and managing-agent requirements handled together. Sorting that boundary early keeps the scope and the programme clear.
A riverside mansion flat and a cottage conversion rarely carry the same work, and the flat settings described here include Hurlingham Road, Peterborough Road, Munster Road and the Fulham Road.
A cottage conversion or Hurlingham mansion flat
For a Fulham flat, establish whether the home is a period conversion or part of a purpose-built block before redesigning wet areas. Map shared drainage and the floor build-up, then coordinate kitchen extraction, storage and any permitted flooring changes with the lease and actual building access.
A Fulham flat refurbishment in a shared building
A Fulham flat may fill one floor of a converted terrace house or sit in a riverside block such as Hurlingham Court or Rivermead Court, which the Hurlingham profile calls later blocks of flats. Before planning rooms, find out from the lease which walls, floors, pipes and windows belong to the building rather than the flat.
Source: LBHF: Hurlingham Conservation Area character profile, pages 5–9 · LEASE: alterations and home improvements
Where a bathroom can go usually depends on reaching the shared stack, so find out who is responsible for the communal drains and isolation valves. In a converted house, decide Approved Document E sound insulation, the floor build-up and any lease conditions as one package, especially before hard flooring goes over the home below.
Source: LEASE: alterations and home improvements · GOV.UK: Approved Document E, resistance to sound · When Building Regulations approval is needed
Have an engineer say which partitions are structural and which way the joists span before any comes out. Treat heating, ventilation and insulation as one decision, since each affects how moisture behaves in old brick and timber, and check any list entry or direction before fixing a flue or vent to a visible wall.
Source: When Building Regulations approval is needed · Historic England: a whole-building approach · Historic England: listed-building consent · LBHF: properties affected by Article 4 directions, list last amended 1 October 2011
Consents to confirm before altering a Fulham flat
In a leasehold flat, the alterations clauses, not the SW6 postcode, say whether you need the landlord’s agreement in writing and under what conditions; planning permission or Building Regulations approval does not replace it. Nor can a street’s history reveal today’s Fulham freeholder, so check the title as well.
Source: LEASE: alterations and home improvements
Rearranging rooms inside a flat is not normally development, but a flat has no Part 1 householder rights, so any change to windows or the outside needs its own check. Front windows in Felden Street and at 88 Munster Road fall under a Central Fulham direction, and the council’s guidance encourages conservation-area owners to replace PVC windows.
Source: When planning permission is required · Householder permitted development technical guidance · GPDO 2015, Schedule 2 Part 1: householder permitted development · LBHF: properties affected by Article 4 directions · LBHF: properties affected by Article 4 directions, list last amended 1 October 2011 · LBHF Planning Guidance SPD, adopted 28 February 2018
Listing can bring internal work within listed building consent, and Hammersmith and Fulham warns that proceeding without it is a criminal offence. For a block holding two or more homes and reaching seven storeys or 18 metres, the Building Safety Regulator approves the work, and Party Wall Act notice arises only for qualifying boundary work.
Source: LBHF: statutory listed buildings · Historic England: listed-building consent · When Building Regulations approval is needed · GOV.UK: Building Regulations approval · Party-wall work requiring notice
Running flat works around Fulham neighbours
Ask whoever manages the building how deliveries and waste will move through the shared entrance, stair or lift, how those parts are protected and when a shared supply may be isolated. Lease or building rules can set stricter hours than the council’s, so check them before booking strip-out.
Source: LEASE: alterations and home improvements
Hammersmith and Fulham allows noise-making work from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday, and 8am to 1pm on Saturday, with nothing on Sundays or bank holidays and section 61 consent needed for other hours. Its construction code treats waste collection as noisy work, so collections from the flat belong within those hours too.
Source: LBHF: construction site noise and permitted hours · LBHF Code of Construction Practice, version 1.0, February 2023
Waste from an upper flat still leaves at the kerb. On council roads, the skip firm itself applies for the licence, the skip is never placed on the footway and its parking bay is suspended beforehand; on TfL’s red routes the licence comes from TfL, so check who manages the road outside the building.
Source: LBHF: skip licences · LBHF: parking suspensions and road closures · TfL: red routes and the TLRN map · TfL: highway licences on red routes · LBHF: roads, bridges and pavements, naming the roads TfL manages
Preparing a Fulham flat brief for quotation
Open with the full address and the building type, either a single floor of a converted house or a purpose-built block, then give the floor level and say whether a lift serves it. Pictures of the rooms to change, the communal stair, the building’s front and any damp show the survey where to look first.
Attach the lease, any building rules for works, plans of the flat and earlier planning, listed building or building control decisions. Note any conservation area, list entry or direction you know of, and check the council’s current map, since the council warns that some areas may have grown since their profiles were written.
Source: LEASE: alterations and home improvements · LBHF: conservation areas, character profiles and maps · LBHF: borough-wide conservation area map
Separate the finishes and repairs already chosen from questions that wait on lifting floorboards, an engineer’s view or the landlord’s reply, and ask for those as provisional sums. Decide who writes to the landlord, who applies for any street licence, who arranges inspections and how specification changes are agreed.
What does a flat refurbishment cost in Fulham?
A written scope and site assessment are needed before any project price can be fixed.
Guide rates exclude VAT and are set by depth of work, not by property type. Compare scopes in our London refurbishment cost-per-square-metre guide.
Fulham flats: divided houses, separate basement entrances and the flood zone
Many Fulham flats are floors of a house. In Walham Grove the profile describes houses of two storeys over a semi-basement, reached by steps to linked flat-roofed porches, with separate entrances to the basements beneath, a layout that lends itself to a lower flat and an upper one.
Below ground, the river matters. Local Plan Policy DC11 says new self-contained basement flats will not be permitted in the Environment Agency's Flood Zone 3 where a breach of the river's defences could flood them rapidly, unless a satisfactory means of escape can be provided.
Sound travels between flats, so the council's guidance asks that the stacking and layout of rooms be considered against adjoining walls, floors and ceilings when dwellings are created; we keep bathrooms and kitchens over each other where the plan allows.
Outside the flat itself, meters matter: the Moore Park profile says gas and electricity meters on the external walls of buildings in conservation areas should be avoided, which affects where a new supply for a divided house goes.
Purpose-built flats are rarer here. The Moore Park profile describes a fairly uniform area of two and three storey terraces, rising to four storeys only where modern flat blocks were added on occasional infill sites, so most Fulham flats we refurbish are floors of a house.
Outside Fulham: Grosvenor Street, Mayfair, where a Mayfair apartment was refurbished with its panelling restored.
Sources: Hammersmith & Fulham: Walham Grove Conservation Area character profile, pages 5–8; Hammersmith & Fulham: Local Plan (February 2018); Hammersmith & Fulham: Planning Guidance Supplementary Planning Document (February 2018); Hammersmith & Fulham: Moore Park Conservation Area character profile.
Flat Refurbishment in Fulham: Questions
How do you start a flat refurbishment in Fulham?
By separating the internal refurbishment from any visible or leasehold-controlled work. In a Fulham flat, assess internal changes against the lease, any listing and applicable Building Regulations, and check external or shared-building work separately for the required permissions, so we sort the two before scoping the job.
Where are the flats you refurbish in Fulham?
Fulham is a family-house area at heart, but its flats gather in the larger riverside villas and mansion buildings around Hurlingham, plus the converted Edwardian cottages across SW6, held on leases where structure, acoustics and any required freeholder consent are considered together.
How much does a flat refurbishment cost in Fulham?
A floor of a divided house such as those on Walham Grove differs from a riverside mansion flat in structure, access and sound separation, and those differences set the cost. Below ground, Policy DC11 bars new basement flats in Flood Zone 3 without a safe way out, which can rule a scheme out altogether. The lease then decides which alterations need consent. We visit the flat, agree the scope and specification with you, and give you a written quotation for the work.
Does Fulham's conservation status affect a flat refurbishment?
For anything visible, yes. Hammersmith & Fulham lists flats and maisonettes among the properties without permitted development rights, which means a Fulham flat's new window, flue or roof alteration needs an application, while internal work is governed mainly by the lease and the Building Regulations.
What local property settings inform a flat refurbishment in Fulham?
The bay-fronted terraces and mansion flats of Hurlingham Road and Peterborough Road, the family houses off Munster Road and the Fulham Road, and the larger villas and conversions towards the river at Hurlingham.
