Building work in Ilford: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Ilford (IG1, Redbridge): the housing, the council rules that apply (Redbridge Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Ilford.

A great many Ilford houses are no longer laid out the way they were built. The long Edwardian terraces off the High Road were divided into flats and bedsits over the decades, and plenty are now being brought back to family use with the partitions, meters and duplicated bathrooms of the old conversion still in place. That is common work across IG1, in the streets around Valentines Park and towards Ilford station, and wherever a wall, a floor or a chimney stack is involved it starts from an appointed structural engineer's design.

Count the homes in Ilford and you get about 14,670: 29% built since 1945, 5% between the wars and 66% before 1919, with flats at 53% and houses at 47%. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 5 statistical areas in Ilford. Counts rounded by the VOA.

A subdivided house back into one home: strip out first

Stripping out a conversion tells you what you have actually bought. Stud walls appear across doorways that used to line through, a second kitchen sits in what was a bedroom, there are three consumer units where there should be one, and a soil stack has been run up the flank wall to serve a bathroom carved out of a landing. Sometimes original structure was taken out along the way with no support put back, which only becomes obvious once the ceilings come down and the deflection in the floor above is there to see.

The route back is methodical. Strip out first, then the engineer looks at what has been exposed and specifies new steel where support is missing or damaged, then the staircase and blocked openings are reinstated, then a single rewire and a single heating system replace the three partial ones you inherited. Touching every room, it is the home renovation route. Converting a property back from separate flats into one dwelling can require planning permission in its own right, a question for Redbridge Council before the work is programmed, not after it has started.

Chimney breasts, flues and solid walls: notice comes before removal

An Edwardian terrace usually has two stacks, and the breasts serving them steal width from the middle room and the bedroom above it. Taking them out is one of the biggest gains in these houses. A chimney breast removal job depends on the masonry above being carried on steel or a designed support, and on the stack being either removed completely or properly supported at high level. Where the stack is shared with the neighbouring house, as it very often is on a terrace, it becomes a party wall matter and notice has to be served on your neighbour before any work begins.

Flues that are left in place need thought as well. A capped flue with no ventilation becomes a cold, damp shaft that pushes moisture into the breast and stains the plaster, so caps are vented and an air brick is fitted low down to keep air moving. On solid nine inch walls the same principle applies more broadly: understand where the water is coming from before treating anything. Raised path levels bridging the damp course and cement render trapping moisture cause far more blown plaster in Ilford than rising damp ever does.

Where to go next for work in Ilford: house extensions in Ilford, the Redbridge area guide, building work in East Ham, building work in Forest Gate and How to Choose a Builder.