Building work in Tower Hamlets: area guide

Tower Hamlets Council is the planning and building control authority for Tower Hamlets, which covers E1, E1W, E2, E3 and E14 and takes in Bow, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf and Wapping. This is our area guide to building work in the borough; for whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Tower Hamlets.

The stock in Tower Hamlets runs to roughly 149,830 dwellings, 90% of them flats and 10% houses, built 12% before 1919, 4% between 1919 and 1939 and 83% after 1945. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 34 statistical areas in Tower Hamlets. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Planning and building control in Tower Hamlets

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

• There are 58 conservation areas in Tower Hamlets and each one has an adopted character appraisal and management guidelines document. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• Tower Hamlets Council's Article 4 direction removing the right to convert residential dwellings (C3) to small HMOs (C4) was approved by the Mayor in Cabinet on 29 January 2020 and came into force on 1 January 2021. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• Tower Hamlets Council has confirmed an Article 4 direction removing permitted development rights for changes of use from Class E uses to Residential (Class C3) uses in certain parts of the borough. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• Tower Hamlets has around 2,000 Grade II listed buildings, which the council describes as buildings of special interest. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• Under the council's Scale A householder pre-application service, a confirmation of advice letter (planning only), charge A1, costs £119 including VAT. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• Tower Hamlets Council's building control service, based at Tower Hamlets Town Hall, is responsible for ensuring that all building work carried out within the borough complies with building regulations. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• For full plans and building notice applications the council inspects the building work at the start, at the end and at various stages to make sure it complies with building regulations. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• Before work starts under a building regulations application you must submit a commencement notice to Tower Hamlets Council at least two working days beforehand. towerhamlets.gov.uk
• The explanation to Policy D.ES4 Flood risk in the Tower Hamlets Local Plan requires all basement developments to conduct a basement impact assessment demonstrating that proposals safeguard structural stability and are safe from a flood risk perspective. towerhamlets.gov.uk

With 90% of Tower Hamlets' 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 Tower Hamlets Council as well as the freeholder's consent. The 10% 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. Taking out a wall or a chimney breast is building regulations work, not planning, unless the building is listed.

Tower Hamlets is mostly flats, most of the stock went up after 1945, and the first question is which kind of building yours sits in. In E1 and E14 there are warehouse conversions at Wapping and concrete-framed apartments through Canary Wharf and the Docklands. In E2 and E3, around Bow and Bethnal Green, post-war council estates sit between surviving Victorian terraces and converted factory buildings. Which of those two groups a property falls into decides the job far more than where the borough boundary sits.

Leases decide the job in riverside buildings at Canary Wharf and Wapping

Flats around Canary Wharf and Wapping are usually held on a long lease inside a managed building. Walls between rooms may be non-loadbearing partitions on a concrete frame, so an open-plan conversion job is achievable, but services run in shared risers and moving them needs the freeholder on board. Sound insulation between floors is a lease obligation in many blocks, so specify it in any bathroom renovation.

Working here means booking the goods lift, agreeing hours with the concierge, protecting communal corridors and carrying waste out rather than into a skip at the door. We give the managing agent insurance details and method statements before we start, because in most blocks nothing gets through the front door without them.

Terraced housing in Bow and Bethnal Green is party wall territory

The terraces on the older streets are a different job: solid brick walls, shallow foundations, a narrow rear yard and a back addition never insulated. Side return infills and rear additions are house extension work, and knocking the ground floor into one space is load-bearing wall removal. Any opening through a loadbearing wall gets steel designed by a structural engineer, and we build to that design rather than improvising.

Because the houses are terraced, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 applies to beam bearings in a shared wall, chimney breast removal and excavation near a neighbour's foundations. You serve the notice as building owner and we plan the programme around it. Tower Hamlets Council building control inspects the structural and drainage stages, and we arrange each visit.

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