Bathroom renovation in Surbiton

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

Southborough Conservation Area was designated in January 1979 and extended in January 1989 and September 1991, according to the council’s page, and extended again in 2009 under the appraisal the Executive adopted that May. The council sums it up as large detached houses of the 1860s to 1930s around Southborough House, a Grade II building of 1808 by John Nash. The appraisal finds mainly detached houses on generous, well-treed plots, the larger ones mostly on Ashcombe Avenue, Corkran Road, Langley Avenue and Southborough Close, in red and yellow brick under natural red clay tiles.

Thomas Pooley conceived Surbiton’s New Town, and building began in 1838 around the landscaped Claremont Crescent Gardens. The Claremont Road area keeps stuccoed Regency-style semi-detached villas and terraces, with original examples on the north side of Victoria Road and the east sides of Claremont Road and St Philip’s Road, while Claremont Gardens has red-brick houses of 1890. St Andrew’s Square, a later phase, has three-storey Gothic brick terraces of 1876 to 1884, and the Cadogan Road area runs from short terraces in Cleveland Road to large Italianate villas on Cadogan Road and Grove Road.

A KT6 or KT5 postcode, or the name Surbiton on an address, does not tell you which council decides, whether a conservation boundary or listing applies, or which consent route to take. KT6 is also used in Tolworth, a Christ Church Road address in Berrylands is KT5, and Southborough runs west to the boundary with Elmbridge, a separate council with its own Long Ditton conservation area. Southborough’s boundary changed in 2009, so check the exact address on the council’s map, then the list entry, the Article 4 pages, the lease or title and the property’s planning history.

Local design and consent context

An Article 4 direction, as Kingston puts it, does not prevent development but requires planning permission to be sought for that type of work. The borough lists three. The Seething Wells Filter Beds direction, confirmed on 14 April 2021, protects the site’s biodiversity by removing the right to put up fences, gates and other enclosures on that site only. The commercial-to-residential direction, as modified by the Secretary of State on 14 June 2023, includes Surbiton District Centre and concerns turning commercial premises into homes. The third covers North Lodge and South Lodge.

Each Surbiton conservation area page, Southborough’s included, records no Article 4 direction. The 2009 Southborough appraisal listed Article 4(2) directions as a tool that could be applied where specific control is needed, but none has been made, so ask the council whether that has changed before planning work to the front of a house.

Kingston locally lists buildings it judges to have sufficient historic, architectural, townscape and environmental interest to be of local value. The 2009 Southborough appraisal lists houses on Corkran Road and Ditton Road, and the St Andrew’s Square page names 1–15, 32–40 and 33–39 St Andrew’s Square. The 2012 Core Strategy counted 24 listed buildings and 36 Buildings of Townscape Merit, the older name for locally listed buildings, in the Surbiton neighbourhood.

Access and site planning

Settle the street arrangements before a start date is fixed. Skips on the public highway are licensed only to skip companies; on private land no licence is needed, and a licensed skip has to be kept at least 15 metres from any junction, bend or road hazard. Only scaffold companies holding the public liability insurance the council requires can apply for a highway scaffold licence, and the scaffold must leave a 1.2-metre route for pedestrians. Hoardings need a licence even on private property, as do materials stored on the highway. Bay suspensions are charged by the day for each five-metre space, and the suspended spaces can lie up to 75 metres from the address; red routes are managed by TfL.

Continue planning

The Surbiton area guide · Bathroom renovation across London · Hampstead Architecture & Planning · Hampstead Chartered Surveyors

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