Kitchen Extensions Holland Park

A kitchen extension in Holland Park is mainly a job for the houses, because a flat needs planning permission for any extension. 81% of homes here are flats, and householder permitted development rules apply to houses only. Terraced houses make up 16% of homes and semi-detached or detached houses 3%, and 67% of the stock was built before 1919. So the work here means a rear addition to a tall period house in W11 or W14, planned around the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea's rear building line policy.

In Holland Park, a rear kitchen extension of about 30 square metres typically costs £45,000 to £97,500 excluding VAT, or £60,000 to £100,000 for a side return (indicative London ranges, Resi, MyBuilder and Checkatrade, 2026). GS Renovation Ltd, a building contractor based in Potters Bar, does the work in Holland Park: the structural engineer we appoint designs the foundations and steel, we build the room and fit the kitchen, and a registered electrician certifies the electrics.

What a Holland Park house can add without planning permission

A terraced or semi-detached house can add a single-storey rear extension of up to three metres beyond the original rear wall under permitted development, and a detached house up to four metres. The height limit for that single-storey addition is four metres. Those national limits still apply in a conservation area, but the larger prior approval route of six or eight metres does not apply on designated land. They only help a house that keeps its rights, since the Royal Borough can withdraw them by direction and an old planning condition may already have done so. Where a house has been extended before, we check what counts as the original rear wall before anyone relies on the figure.

Side extensions are where the conservation area bites. On Article 2(3) designated land, which includes a conservation area, every side extension needs householder planning permission. On a terrace the side return is the obvious place for a wider kitchen, so check the designation before the drawings go far. If permission is needed, your architect or agent applies, and we price and programme the build from the approved drawings. A wider side return also changes where the drainage and the party wall footings run, so those details belong on the drawings from the start, and you as building owner serve any party wall notices.

Housing in Holland Park

Holland Park's housing, as the Council Tax list records it, is about 4,280 homes: 19% houses, 81% flats, with 67% pre-1919, 4% interwar and 28% built since 1945. Since most homes here are flats, only a ground floor flat in Holland Park with its own garden can extend its kitchen.

The neighbours' rear building line sets the depth

The Royal Borough resists any extension that would project further back than the existing general rear building line of the neighbouring extensions. That is Policy CL9 of its Consolidated Local Plan, and it matters more than the permitted development figures when a scheme goes in for permission. Before we price a Holland Park extension, we walk the back of the row and note where the neighbours' extensions stop. That line, not the largest figure the rules allow, is often what fixes the depth your designer can draw.

Appraisals for neighbouring conservation areas show what the Royal Borough looks for. The Ladbroke Conservation Area Appraisal lists poorly designed rear extensions among the negative features affecting communal gardens. Where the back of your house looks onto a shared garden, the design has to sit quietly in that view. For the build, that points to careful brick matching, slim roof edges and glazing that fits the proportions of the house rather than a full-width box.

Digging a basement kitchen instead of building out

Some owners look at digging down rather than building out, and the Royal Borough controls that closely. A borough-wide Article 4 direction made on 15 April 2015 removed permitted development rights for basement development, so digging under a house here needs planning permission. That affects Holland Park houses, since flats have no permitted development rights to lose. It also moves the decision earlier: you settle whether the kitchen goes down or out before the extension drawings are finished, because the two schemes change each other's structure.

Policy CL7 caps a basement at 50 per cent of each garden or open part of the site, and asks for at least one metre of soil above any part of it beneath a garden. It also rules out excavation under a listed building, including vaults. The draft Local Validation List asks for a Construction Method Statement with any application for a new or enlarged basement. A garden-level kitchen extension that opens onto a lowered floor therefore needs the basement and the extension designed together, with one set of consents behind the programme.

Opening the back wall, the steel and the fit-out

The heaviest part of a Holland Park kitchen extension is taking out the rear wall of the house, and on a site covered by the Royal Borough's Final Draft Code of Construction Practice the code controls when that noise happens. High impact work, including demolition and concrete breaking, is then limited to 9am to noon and 2pm to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday. Where the code applies, often through a planning condition, we plan the breakout, the propping and the steel delivery into those windows so the rest of the day goes on quieter trades.

The structural engineer we appoint sizes the beams that carry the house above the new opening, and building control inspects the foundations, drainage and steel. Old clay drains often run under the back of these houses, so we survey them early and reroute where the new floor covers a run. Roof lights, glazing, the kitchen units and worktops then follow in the same programme, so one team takes the room from breakout to finished kitchen.

• Cooker hood extraction ducted through the roof or flank wall
• Floor levels matched through the old opening
• Soil stack and gully rerouting beneath the new floor

VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for Holland Park. Counts rounded by the VOA.

If you are weighing up kitchen extensions in Holland Park, it may help to read kitchen renovation in Holland Park, kitchen extensions across Kensington and Chelsea, fitting the kitchen itself, sign-off by building control on a kitchen extension, kitchen extensions across London and Getting Daylight Into a Deep Plan.

Why Choose GS Renovation in Holland Park

You deal with one firm from the survey to the finished kitchen. We read your approved drawings against what the house actually is, bring in the structural engineer we appoint for the steel, and set out a programme that fits the demolition inside the permitted hours. Our founder has decades of hands-on building work behind him, and we keep one team on site through the structure, the drainage, the glazing and the kitchen fit-out, so nothing waits on a separate contractor.

• Old kitchen kept in use until the new shell is weathertight
• Drains surveyed by camera before the footprint is fixed
• Aftercare and snagging support once the job is finished

Checked by Abdelaaziz Saaid, founder and director of GS Renovation Ltd (Companies House no. 14611254). Structural design is by the consulting engineer appointed to your project.