Flat refurbishment in Kew

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

Kew Green Conservation Area was designated on 14 January 1969 for the Green and the riverside, then extended in 1982 along the Kew Road approach and in 1988 over the residential streets east of the Green. Its appraisal, adopted on 8 February 2024, finds Georgian houses around the Green and a mainly Victorian Priory Estate to the east, where Forest, Maze, Gloucester and Priory Roads were being built in 1866. The east side of the Green itself mixes cottages, mansion blocks and terraces, and west of Kew Bridge stand 20th-century flats set among riverside greenery and deep rear gardens.

Kew Gardens Conservation Area began in 1969 as the Lichfield Road Conservation Area and lies around Kew Gardens Station; its statement records five extensions, the latest on 9 February 2017. It describes substantial detached and semi-detached villas of two to two and a half storeys in large plots behind continuous walls or railings, built in red or yellow stock brick with timber sliding sashes. Ennerdale Road has three-storey Victorian and Edwardian houses with some infill flats, while the two-storey cottages of Clarence Road, Elizabeth Cottages and Victoria Cottages are small and closely packed.

Kew is the name of a ward, of a Local Plan place strategy and of several conservation areas, but neither the name nor a TW9 postcode shows which council decides an application, whether a conservation area or the World Heritage Site covers the house, whether it is listed or whether an Article 4 direction names it. The river is a boundary as well: the bank opposite Kew is in Hounslow. Look up the house number on the council’s conservation area map, search the list for an entry and read the Article 4 directions, then turn to the title or lease and the planning history.

Local design and consent context

The Kew Green appraisal was adopted on 8 February 2024 after consultation from 18 September to 27 October 2023. It reads the area as four character areas, Kew Road, The Green, Riverside and the Priory Estate, and counts 38 listed buildings, 223 Buildings of Townscape Merit and two Grade II listed bridges; the national list includes Kew Bridge and Kew Railway Bridge, both Grade II. It places the conservation area under the buffer zone of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew World Heritage Site, inscribed on 3 July 2003, with some parts of the Site itself inside the boundary, and records two Archaeological Priority Areas over it, Kew Gardens at Tier I and Kew Green at Tier 2.

The Kew Green appraisal explains that the Article 4 directions in its area affect only unlisted houses in single occupation, and only elevations facing a highway, waterway, private street or other public space. The February 1977 direction, which the council’s register lists, covers roof changes including dormers, window changes including removing bay windows, and rendering or painting brickwork at Nos 1 to 21 Watcombe Cottages, Medina Cottage, The Toll House, 1 and 2 York Villas, 1 to 6 Thetis Terrace and 1 to 7 Willow Cottages. The direction dated 17 February 1995 varies by street: at Priory Road (1–59 odd) it covers only hard surfaces, satellite antennae, gates, fences and walls, and means of access; for Cambridge Cottages (1–36), The Green (28–46 even) and Gloucester Road (1–41 and 53–91 odd) it covers enlargement and roof changes among other items, with exterior painting added at Cambridge Cottages and The Green.

The Kew Village Planning Guidance is dated July 2014, though the council’s list shows no adoption date for it, and it was written against the 2009 Core Strategy and 2011 Development Management Plan, so read it for its account of local character rather than for current policy. The front-garden parking SPD of 2006 it refers to was withdrawn from 3 June 2020. The House Extensions and External Alterations SPD, adopted on 1 June 2015, discourages hip-to-gable roof extensions and says hipped or gabled dormers are often preferable to flat-roofed ones, with rooflights as an alternative.

Access and site planning

Noisy work in Richmond is limited to 8am–6pm on weekdays and 8am–1pm on Saturdays, with Sundays and bank holidays off-limits. Scaffolders keep to the same limits: in the council’s Construction Code of Practice, scaffolding is noisy work. Tell neighbours on both sides, and the managing agent of a block, when the loud stages fall, check the lease for any stricter rules, and decide early whether your household will stay at home through the noisiest stages.

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

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