Building work in East Ham: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in East Ham (E6, Newham): the housing, the council rules that apply (Newham Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in East Ham.

The most common reason anyone in East Ham rings a builder is a wall that will not dry out. The Victorian and Edwardian terraces running back from East Ham High Street North and around Central Park are built in solid nine inch brickwork with no cavity at all, and that construction only works if it is allowed to dry the way it was intended to. Get that right and any kitchen, bathroom or opening in E6 follows easily. Get it wrong and every finish applied afterwards fails in the same place, so we start with the cause, not the symptom.

For East Ham the Council Tax list gives about 15,490 homes; by type 41% flats and 59% houses, by age 30% post-war, 6% interwar and 64% older than 1919. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 5 statistical areas in East Ham. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Why a solid wall gets wet decides the first job

A nine inch wall absorbs rain on its outer face and gives it back once the weather changes. Cover it in a cement render or a modern masonry paint and that cycle stops, so water gets in through cracks and then cannot leave. The other usual suspects are mundane. Garden levels raised over the years until the path bridges the damp proof course. A cracked hopper or a leaking gutter on the rear addition soaking one strip of wall for a decade. Failed flaunching at the chimney letting water down the stack. Each has a specific fix and none of them is an injection.

Underneath, the ground floor is timber over a ventilated void, and that ventilation is regularly compromised by airbricks rendered over, buried under a patio or blocked by debris. Still, damp air in a closed void is what starts decay in joist ends. So we find the actual moisture path, correct it, allow the wall to dry, then replaster in a mix suited to the background. Where that runs through several rooms it is a home renovation job, not a kitchen renovation. Replastering before the cause is fixed is money spent twice, and we say so at the survey.

The rest of the house, and the street outside: openings are RSJ work

Once the fabric is behaving, everything else can proceed in order. Insulating a solid wall internally is achievable but needs proper detailing, because a badly specified lining moves the cold surface behind the insulation and can create the very problem it was meant to solve. Ventilation, extraction that vents outside, and cold bridges at reveals and floor junctions belong in the same conversation. Opening up the back rooms is RSJ installation: an engineer we appoint designs it, and Newham Council building control inspects the steel and its bearings before they are covered.

The practical constraints in E6 come from the street rather than the house. Most terraces here have no rear vehicle access, so materials and waste travel through the hallway and out of the front door, and floors and stairs are protected before that starts. A skip standing on the highway needs a permit from the council, arranged in advance, and where parking controls apply the loading has to be timed and short. We deliver in smaller, more frequent loads for that reason and sweep the frontage at the end of each day so the street is left as we found it.

Where to go next for work in East Ham: house extensions in East Ham, the Newham area guide, building work in Forest Gate, building work in Ilford and Renovation Budget & Contingency.