Building work in Borough: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Borough (SE1, Southwark): the housing, the council rules that apply (Southwark Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Borough.

Work in Borough is an exercise in constraint. SE1 packs period buildings, upper floor flats over shops and restaurants, and contemporary apartments into streets where a lorry cannot stand still for long and Borough Market pulls traffic through from early morning. Very few of these properties have rear access, many share a single staircase with a business below, and the buildings are older and more altered than they look. So most jobs here are structural alterations, kitchens or bathrooms inside a flat, with Southwark Council building control coordinated and every delivery planned rather than hoped for.

Count the homes in Borough and you get about 12,140: 73% built since 1945, 3% between the wars and 18% before 1919, with flats at 94% and houses at 6%. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for Borough & Southwark Street and Southwark St George's. Counts rounded by the VOA.

A flat over a shop is a fire separation job before a layout job

A flat above a shop is a different building regulations proposition from a flat above another flat. Fire separation between the commercial unit and the home above has to be maintained, and the protected route out is often a single stair serving everything. So openings cut in a compartment floor or wall need reinstating properly, downlighters punched through a fire rated ceiling in a new kitchen need hoods or a different detail, and a door that looks like joinery may be a fire door doing a job.

The structure below is the other unknown. Ground floors along Borough High Street were opened out for retail decades ago, sometimes more than once, and the columns and beams that made that possible are often boxed into partitions and forgotten. Before we remove anything upstairs we establish what is carrying what, which makes it a structural alteration question first, and the structural engineer we appoint issues a design that accounts for the earlier work. Building control inspects the bearings and the fire separation before anything is closed up and the finishes go back.

Getting materials in and waste out of SE1 shapes the steel design

There is rarely anywhere to put a skip near Southwark Cathedral or the streets under the Shard, and where one is possible it needs a permit from Southwark Council and often a suspended bay as well. Our default here is bagged removal on a booked collection, timed outside market deliveries and the lunchtime crowds. Materials come in the same way: broken into carryable loads, brought up the stairs on protected treads, and stored inside the flat, never on a landing your neighbours need.

Steel is the item that catches people out. A beam long enough to span a reception room may not turn on a half landing, so an RSJ installation here is designed in sections to be bolted and plated on site, specified by the engineer from the start rather than as a rescue. Access agreements with the business downstairs are settled before the programme is issued, and the programme names the dates they depend on. One person holds those arrangements together, which on a site this tight is worth more than an extra pair of hands.

Where to go next for work in Borough: kitchen renovation in Borough, house extensions in Borough, the Southwark area guide, building work in Bermondsey, building work in Wapping and Renovations That Add Value.