Commercial Fit-Out Greenwich

Commercial fit-out in Greenwich means shops, cafes, restaurants, salons and clinics: the customer-facing units of the borough's retail centres and high streets, plus units serving visitors to Greenwich Park and the Maritime Museum. We strip out, build counters and service areas, lay floors that suit trading, fit lighting and finish to your specification. Three local rules shape these jobs: what the shutter may look like, how a shopfront in a conservation area is judged, and whether the unit can become a home without planning permission.

For Greenwich, published UK guides put refurbishing a retail space at £1,500 to £3,000 per m² and a restaurant or cafe at £2,000 to £4,500 per m², and London units usually cost more (MyBuilder, 2026). GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Greenwich: our own trades do the strip-out, back of house, counter fitting and finishes, and we coordinate the shopfront, extraction, electrical and fire specialists the unit needs.

Shutters and shopfronts on Greenwich high streets

Royal Greenwich's Urban Design Guide will not support solid or pinhole external roller shutters, typically supporting only open mesh or grill shutters. A tenant used to a solid shutter elsewhere will need a different security plan in Greenwich. Internal open mesh shutters behind the glass, laminated glazing and a monitored alarm often do the job, and they keep the window lit and visible from the street after closing, which also helps passing trade see the shop.

Choose the shutter before the shopfront is detailed, because the box, guides and motor need space in the fascia and reveals. A new external shutter, or a shopfront change that materially alters how the building looks, needs planning permission, and illuminated signs usually need advertisement consent. Your designer or agent handles those applications and we build to the approved drawings. Getting this order right on a Greenwich parade avoids fitting a shopfront and then cutting it back to take a shutter the planners will accept.

Shopfronts in the Woolwich and Royal Arsenal conservation areas

The Woolwich Conservation Area was designated in May 2019, and the Royal Arsenal Conservation Area in Woolwich was designated in 1981. Check which boundary, if either, a unit in that part of Greenwich sits inside before the design is fixed. The Woolwich appraisal says alterations and extensions to heritage assets will only be supported where they sustain and enhance their heritage significance, which reaches shopfronts, signs and external plant on any building that counts as a heritage asset.

Inside the unit, a fit-out in an older Woolwich building means working with what is there. Original cornices, cast iron columns or timber floors can often be kept and exposed rather than hidden, which also avoids disturbing the fabric. If the building is listed, internal works that affect its character need listed building consent too, which the owner or their designer obtains. External changes such as new extract ducts, condensers or signs draw the most scrutiny, so we route services internally where the layout allows and agree plant positions with your designer first.

Use class, extraction and access for a Greenwich cafe or shop

Start with the use class, because it decides whether planning permission is needed before any fit-out. Class E covers commercial, business and service uses, which takes in shops, cafes, restaurants, clinics and gyms, so moving between them inside Class E needs no planning permission for the use itself. Hot food takeaways, pubs and bars sit outside Class E as sui generis uses, so turning a Greenwich shop into one of them needs planning permission, and the extraction and odour control are judged in that application.

Food units carry the heaviest services. A cafe or restaurant needs a kitchen extract routed to a point the planners accept, a grease trap or other grease management on the drainage, and hand wash basins where food is prepared. Building regulations add an accessible entrance and, where there is space, an accessible WC under Part M, and escape routes, fire doors and detection under Part B. On a Greenwich parade we fix the kitchen position first, because the extract route sets the rest of the plan.

Greenwich retail centres and the Class MA Article 4 direction

Royal Greenwich made a non-immediate Article 4 direction on 3 August 2022 withdrawing Class E to C3 permitted development across many retail centres, and it came into force on 8 August 2023. The direction removes Class MA rights for change of use from Class E to Class C3 dwelling houses. For a landlord, that means a unit in those centres cannot become a home without a full planning application, and a durable shell, a proper services strip and a reusable shopfront serve several tenants over time.

Working in a trading parade needs its own programme. Royal Greenwich usually limits noisy construction to weekdays and Saturday mornings, with none on Sundays or bank holidays, and where flats sit above a Greenwich shop, their residents are there all day, so noisy work is planned around them. Deliveries are timed around loading rules on the street, and a hoarding on the pavement needs a council licence; failing to comply with it can bring a fine. We keep neighbouring shops trading by containing dust and keeping the shared entrance clear.

• Gym and fitness studio fit-outs with hard-wearing floors
• Programmes worked back from your opening date
• Working around neighbouring shops' trading hours

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 35 statistical areas in Greenwich. Counts rounded by the VOA.

People planning commercial fit-out in Greenwich may also want office fit-out in Greenwich, our Greenwich area guide, builders in London, how building control works in London, how we handle commercial fit-out across London and Tiling Cost.

Trusted Commercial Fit-Out in Greenwich

A shop or cafe fit-out often has an opening date fixed by the lease and the rent-free period, and every week of delay is a week of rent without takings. We plan backwards from that date, with counters, joinery and the shopfront made off site while the strip-out and services run. The extraction specialist, electrician and fire alarm installer are booked around the kitchen position. Your designer or brand guide sets the finish and we build to it. As the client under the CDM regulations you have duties of your own, and we run the site as your contractor.

• Programme worked back from the date you want to open to customers
• Shopfront, sign and extract consents checked before anything is ordered
• Honest updates if a date or a detail has to move

Reviewed jobs near Greenwich

1 MyBuilder review from Woolwich, with each customer's own job title:

• Replace kitchen extractor hob, Woolwich, 27 Apr 2024 (5 out of 5)

Read all 31 on our reviews page.

Checked by Abdelaaziz Saaid, founder and director of GS Renovation Ltd (Companies House no. 14611254).