Bathroom renovation in Kingston upon Thames

Design the room around water, waste and ventilation.

Start with the bathroom renovation brief

Record the room dimensions, existing fittings, drainage route and floor construction before choosing a layout. Include the shower or bath, storage, lighting, ventilation and the details that affect everyday use in the same brief.

Agree the waterproofing details, access to valves, finishes and testing before installation. If it is the only bathroom, discuss how the household will manage while the work is carried out.

The local building context

Kingston Hill Conservation Area, designated in November 2004, is a group of early Victorian to early 20th-century large houses in a woodland setting, notable for its relationship with Richmond Park and the park’s listed boundary wall. The council’s 2004 report describes mature, dense landscaping, low-key boundaries and buildings set well within their plots. The Liverpool Road area has individually designed detached and semi-detached houses from the 1850s on the edge of Richmond Park, and the Park Road appraisal of July 2008 picks out Nos. 9–29 Kingston Hill as a high-quality group on long plots.

In North Kingston, the Richmond Road conservation area occupies land between Albany Park Road and Richmond Road that once formed part of the Bank Grove Estate. Most of the houses on those two roads went up between 1891 and 1898, detached on Albany Park Road and semi-detached along Richmond Road, with gabled fronts, bay windows, tile hanging and decorative brickwork. It lies close to Riverside North, designated in November 2004, a linear area shaped by the Thames, where the 2002 appraisal records four substantial houses of about 1895 on Lower Ham Road and three eight-storey blocks of flats.

Neither a place name nor a postcode tells you the council, a conservation boundary, a listing or the consent route. A Coombe Lane West address in KT2 carries the post town New Malden, Kingston Vale addresses can carry SW15, Merton has its own Westcoombe Avenue conservation area and Richmond upon Thames its own Richmond Road (East Twickenham) conservation area. Check the exact address against the council’s conservation area pages, the list entry, the Article 4 and Local Area of Special Character pages, then the title or lease and the property’s planning history.

Local design and consent context

The lodges direction, made on 29 August 2023 and confirmed by the Place Committee on 8 February 2024, removes the right to demolish buildings on those two plots without planning permission; both lodges are locally listed. The commercial direction, in its modified form in force from 14 June 2023, covers local centres including Kingston Hill and Park Road, Richmond Road, Coombe Road and Kingston Vale. It concerns turning commercial premises into homes, not alterations to an existing house or flat.

Locally listed buildings, once called Buildings of Townscape Merit, are those the council finds of enough historic, architectural, townscape and environmental interest to be of local value. Its conservation area pages name Tudor Cottage, The Wall Cottage and Soames House on Coombe Hill Road, the Dorincourt group, Holmwood and Kingston Hill Place on Kingston Hill, several houses on Liverpool Road and Crescent Road, and the Albany Boathouse at 92 Lower Ham Road.

The borough also has 19 Local Areas of Special Character. They leave permitted development rights unaffected and do not prevent demolition, but the council asks you to show that any environmental change has a positive impact, and it applies Core Strategy policies CS 8 and DM 12 within them. Its Kingston and North Kingston list includes The Drive, which the Coombe Wood page names as adjacent, and Woodside Road and Eastbury Road, which the 2002 appraisal describes as a grid running east from Canbury Gardens.

Access and site planning

Plan the street side before fixing a start date. A skip on any part of the public highway needs a licence, which the council issues only to skip companies; a skip on private land needs none, and a licensed skip may not stand within 15 metres of a junction, bend or other hazard. Scaffolding on the highway needs a licence that only scaffold companies with the required public liability cover can obtain, with a 1.2-metre pedestrian route; a hoarding needs one even on private land, as do building materials stored on the highway. Parking suspensions are charged per five-metre space per day and can be up to 75 metres away, and red routes are managed by TfL.

Continue planning

The Kingston upon Thames area guide · Bathroom renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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