Building work in Eltham: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Eltham (SE9, Greenwich): the housing, the council rules that apply (the Royal Borough of Greenwich for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Eltham.

Houses in Eltham are approaching a century old, and most are on their second set of services at best. The 1930s semis around the high street and the Arts and Crafts style cottages near Well Hall Pleasaunce were solidly built, but the wiring, pipework, heating and windows have been renewed piecemeal by different owners at different times. So the first SE9 question is less about adding space than whether the problem is one room or the whole set of services, because refitting one room over unresolved services is a very different job.

On the valuation list Eltham counts about 14,360 homes, 27% flats and 73% houses; 17% predate 1919, 52% are interwar and 30% post-war. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 5 statistical areas in Eltham. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Piecemeal services in an Eltham semi point to one route, not three

Open up an Eltham semi and the archaeology is familiar. Rubber or early PVC cable feeding some circuits and a later partial rewire feeding others. Microbore pipework from an old heating upgrade under floors nobody has lifted since. A kitchen extended in one decade and a bathroom moved in another, with the drainage adapted rather than redesigned. When that is the picture, it is a home renovation job resolved as one system: a full rewire with a new consumer unit, heating sized for the house as it will be, and drainage checked from the stack out to the boundary.

The fabric responds well, because these houses have cavity walls, which gives options a solid walled Victorian terrace does not. Cavities can be assessed and filled, loft insulation topped up, and suspended timber ground floors insulated between the joists while they are up for the pipework anyway. The one thing to handle carefully is ventilation. Sealing a house that used to leak air through its floorboards, chimneys and window frames without controlled replacement is exactly how condensation and mould appear in bedrooms that were previously dry.

Living in an SE9 semi during the work, and getting it signed off

Work in an occupied SE9 home is possible in phases, but it is slower and considerably dustier than moving out for the noisy weeks, and we say which your project genuinely needs at quotation stage. If you stay, we work in defined zones, seal them properly and keep one bathroom and a working kitchen point available for as long as we can. If the house is empty, the sequence compresses, and temporary accommodation is often recovered in programme time alone.

Anything structural, notifiable electrical work and drainage changes go through building control, coordinated by us with the Royal Borough of Greenwich or an approved inspector. Taking out an internal wall is a load-bearing wall removal job: the support is designed by an independent engineer appointed for it and installed exactly as specified, with props in until the bearings have been seen. Because these are semi detached houses, a bearing into the shared wall brings the Party Wall Act into play, and the notice goes to your neighbour before that stage. One person holds the sequence together from survey to certificate.

Where to go next for work in Eltham: house extensions in Eltham, the Greenwich area guide, building work in Sidcup, building work in Chislehurst and Living at Home During a Renovation.