Flat refurbishment in Surbiton

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

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

The council’s pages date the areas as follows: St Andrew’s Square, March 1971, extended October 1987 and June 1991; Southborough, January 1979, extended January 1989 and September 1991; Claremont Road, October 1987, extended July 1991; Surbiton Hill Park, January 1988; Oakhill, April 1988, extended September 2009; Victoria Avenue, July 1988, extended June 1991; Christchurch, September 1988; Cadogan Road, May 1989; Surbiton Town Centre, June 1991; Riverside South, February 2003; and Fishponds Park, November 2004. Southborough’s boundary also changed in 2009, when the Executive adopted the boundary its appraisal recommended and 15–25 Langley Road passed to Oakhill.

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.

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