House Refurbishment Soho

House refurbishment in Soho is a small, specialised market: the VOA counts 2% of homes in its Fitzrovia West and Soho area as houses, and every one of them is terraced. When a whole Soho house does come up, expect an old building with lime plaster, timber floors, tired services and sash windows, quite possibly inside the Soho Conservation Area, on a street with little room for a skip. We renew the fabric room by room, to your designer's drawings where there are any, and leave the plan of the house as it is.

For Soho, published UK figures put a three-bed house refurbishment at £43,530 to £110,350, and London houses usually cost more, with a London architect allowing £1,800 to £2,200 per square metre before VAT (Checkatrade and Bradley Van Der Straeten Architects, 2026). GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Soho: we renew the wiring, pipework, heating, plaster, floors and joinery of the whole house under one contract, and a registered electrician certifies the rewire.

Why a whole house is rare in Soho, and what one needs

A whole house to refurbish is the exception in Soho. The VOA, whose figures cover Fitzrovia West and Soho together, records 98% of homes there as flats and 2% as houses, and it puts 0% in the semi-detached or detached groups, so the houses that exist are terraced. It also dates 48% of those homes before 1919. A Soho house to refurbish is therefore likely to be a narrow period terrace over several floors, where the work is renewing what is there rather than adding space.

That shapes the scope before anything is priced. On a tall, narrow Soho house the heavy work stacks vertically: a rewire and replumb run through every floor, the stair carries all the materials, and the roof and chimney stacks are reached by scaffold rather than from a garden. We walk every floor with you, note the floors, joists, plaster and joinery room by room, and turn that into a schedule you can check line by line.

Housing in Soho

The Council Tax list puts the Fitzrovia West & Soho statistical area at about 6,840 homes, 98% flats against 2% houses; 48% went up before 1919, 5% between the wars and 47% after 1945. Where most homes are flats, where most homes in Soho are flats, a whole house is refurbished as one building, with a single intake for the services and one roof to keep sound.

Sash windows, front doors and roofs in the Soho Conservation Area

The outside of a Soho house is where the planning rules bite. The Soho Conservation Area was designated in 1969 and extended in 1976, 1979, 1983, 1990 and 2005, and in a Westminster conservation area some alterations need planning permission that would not need it elsewhere. Westminster has also removed permitted development rights in eight of its conservation areas, so ask your designer whether your street is in one before any window, door or roof covering is ordered.

Listing adds a second layer. The statutory list includes around 11,000 buildings and other structures in Westminster, and the council's conservation audits also name unlisted buildings of merit. If your Soho house is listed, internal work such as removing old plaster, joinery or fireplaces can need listed building consent too. For sash windows our default is repair: new cords, weights, beads and draught seals, with slim secondary glazing inside where the rules allow it.

Scaffold, skips and working hours on a Soho street

Refurbishing a Soho house means working on a busy, narrow street, so access is planned before the start date. Westminster needs a temporary structure licence for scaffolding, fencing or a cherry picker on the road or pavement, and its building site guidance keeps the footway at 1.5m wide or more around works. For roof and chimney repairs on a terraced front, the scaffold design has to fit that width, which can mean a gantry scaffold over the footway. Repairing or rebuilding a chimney stack shared with the house next door needs a party wall notice under the Party Wall Act: you serve it, and the work proceeds on the neighbour's written consent or an award.

Noisy work runs Monday to Friday 8am to 6pm and Saturday 8am to 1pm, and a Section 61 application is needed at least 28 days ahead for anything noisy outside those hours. Small projects sit at Level 4 of Westminster's Code of Construction Practice, expected to follow its principles without formal approval or fees, and a whole-house refurbishment is likely to count as one. In practice we bag waste on the day it is made, book collections and deliveries, and give the neighbours a dated programme.

Building control, certificates and the order of a Soho house job

Where a Soho house refurbishment includes work that goes to Westminster's building control, such as structural repairs, new drainage or renewed roofs and floors, the council must be told the start date at least 2 days before works begin. We sequence the house in the same order every time: strip out and open up, repairs to joists and plaster backgrounds, first fix of wiring and pipes, plastering in lime or gypsum to suit the wall, then second fix, joinery and decoration.

The paperwork at the end matters as much. Westminster issues a completion certificate only once all fees are paid and all relevant electrical and gas certificates have been supplied. A registered electrician tests and certifies the rewire, and an engineer on the Gas Safe Register commissions the boiler, so we collect both before the final inspection is booked. Where a roof, floor or wall is renewed, Part L can require that element to be insulated to current standards, and the building control surveyor checks it.

• Timber repairs where rot or beetle turns up at strip-out
• Whole-house rewires, certified at completion by a registered electrician
• New boiler, cylinder and radiators sized to every room, fitted by a Gas Safe registered engineer

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for the Fitzrovia West & Soho statistical area, which also covers west Fitzrovia. Counts rounded by the VOA.

If this is your first project in Soho, these are worth a look: home renovation in Soho, house refurbishment across Westminster, builders in London for house refurbishment, which parts of a house refurbishment building control inspects, how we handle house refurbishment across London and New Central Heating Cost.

The GS Renovation Difference in Soho

A Soho house is a one-off: tall, narrow, old and hemmed in by neighbours and traffic. We start with a walk through every floor, give you a written schedule of works and a programme that shows the noisy stages, and keep one contact running the trades from strip out to handover. Where you are living in the house, we phase the work floor by floor so there is always a working kitchen, bathroom and bedroom.

• Provisional sums for what lies behind the plaster shown as separate lines
• First fix cabling on each floor inspected by the electrician before the walls are closed
• A written scope and programme agreed before work starts

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