Flat refurbishment in Kingston upon Thames

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

Coombe has three conservation areas, which the council’s pages date to January 1990 for Coombe Wood, January 1996 for Coombe Hill and February 1997 for Coombe House. Coombe Hill is largely 20th-century houses within the grounds of two 19th-century mansions, with several mid-19th-century buildings by George Devey. Coombe Wood has large Victorian, Edwardian and 20th-century houses in the triangle of Kingston Hill, George Road and Warren Road. Coombe House is the core of a demolished 16th-century manorial estate, whose high brick walls survive on Warren Rise and Fitzgeorge Avenue.

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.

Local design and consent context

The council’s pages give these designation dates: Liverpool Road, November 1980, extended October 1990; Park Road, June 1989; Coombe Wood, January 1990; Coombe Hill, January 1996; Kingston Vale, September 1996, extended January 2002; Coombe House, February 1997; and Kingston Hill and Riverside North, both November 2004. Kingston Vale grew out of the Richmond Park (Kingston) conservation area, after part of the park area at Robin Hood Gate passed from Richmond upon Thames to Kingston in a 1995 boundary review.

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.

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.

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The Kingston upon Thames area guide · Flat refurbishment across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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