Building work in Southwark: area guide

Southwark Council is the planning and building control authority for Southwark, which covers SE1, SE5, SE15, SE16, SE17, SE21 and SE22 and takes in Peckham, Dulwich, Camberwell, Bermondsey and Borough. This is our area guide to building work in the borough; for whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Southwark.

Southwark has about 149,990 homes on the Council Tax list: 25% pre-1919, 7% interwar and 64% post-war, with flats making up 81% and houses 19%. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 34 statistical areas in Southwark. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Planning and building control in Southwark

What Southwark Council publishes about building work in the borough, with each point linked to the council page it comes from:

• Southwark's Householder SPD says overly large or box dormers will not be permitted in Conservation Areas or for Listed Buildings. moderngov.southwark.gov.uk
• Southwark confirmed an Article 4 direction withdrawing permitted development rights for changes of use from light industrial (Class B1c) to a dwelling-house in any railway arches. moderngov.southwark.gov.uk
• Southwark's final fees and charges schedule sets the pre-application fee for householder listed building development, extensions or internal alterations, at £264.30. moderngov.southwark.gov.uk
• Southwark Council's online form lets applicants begin a building regulations application as a building notice, full plans or regularisation. forms.southwark.gov.uk
• Southwark's final fees and charges schedule lists its building control fees excluding VAT, with VAT added at the time of invoicing or charging. moderngov.southwark.gov.uk
• Southwark's final fees and charges schedule sets the building control charge for an extension less than 40sqm at £1,227.30, up from £1,115.70. moderngov.southwark.gov.uk
• Southwark's Householder SPD says planning permission is required for all homes to create a new basement or extend an existing one. moderngov.southwark.gov.uk

With 81% of Southwark's homes flats, the lease comes first on many jobs. Flats have no householder permitted development, so an extension or most external changes to a flat need planning permission from Southwark Council as well as the freeholder's consent. The 19% that are houses keep the householder rights within the size limits, and in a conservation area a single-storey rear extension survives unless an Article 4 direction removes it. Check Southwark Council's conservation area and Article 4 lists for the street before anything is drawn. Taking out a wall or a chimney breast is building regulations work, not planning, unless the building is listed.

Southwark is a long, narrow borough and the housing changes completely as you move through it. Post-war estates and new blocks, which hold most of its homes, riverside warehouse conversions in SE1 and SE16, Georgian and early Victorian townhouses around Camberwell, dense Victorian terraces in Peckham, and generously proportioned villas up the hill in Dulwich. Most homes here are flats, so the first gate is usually the freeholder, not the wall. A job in Bermondsey and a job in SE21 share little beyond the council you deal with, so we plan them as separate kinds of work.

Warehouse flats and riverside blocks start at the freeholder

Bermondsey and Borough are full of former warehouses converted to apartments, heavy timber or concrete floors, exposed brick, tall windows and services run through shared risers. These are leasehold, managed and often listed or within a conservation area, so the freeholder's licence and the planning position come before anything is stripped out.

The work is then precise, not heavy. The riser fixes drainage, so moving a sink is a kitchen renovation planned around it and moving a shower is a bathroom renovation tied to the shared stack. Sound separation over the flat below meets Part E, with mechanical ventilation under Part F where windows are limited. We arrange Southwark Council building control visits at notifiable stages and hand over the completion paperwork.

Estates, terraces and villas: three different starting points

Most Southwark homes were built after 1945 and most are flats, many of them on estates where the council is often still the freeholder. In a leasehold flat on an estate, written consent from the freeholder comes before any wall, window or soil pipe is touched, and the lease usually sets working hours and what floor coverings are allowed. A kitchen renovation or bathroom renovation there is planned around the shared riser and the flat below.

The houses are a different job. The Victorian terraces of Peckham and Camberwell are solid brick with a closet wing and a side return, so opening the back rooms is load-bearing wall removal and filling the return is a house extension, usually with party wall notice to at least one neighbour. Up the hill in Dulwich the villas have longer spans and heavier loads, so the beam, the padstones and the temporary support are designed by the structural engineer we appoint before anything is priced as certain.

Popular starting points in Southwark: kitchen renovation in Southwark, house extensions across Southwark, builders in London and Living at Home During a Renovation.