Building work in Kentish Town: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Kentish Town (NW5, Camden): the housing, the council rules that apply (Camden Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Kentish Town.

Many jobs in Kentish Town begin by undoing somebody else's. Most homes here are flats, in post-war blocks as well as converted houses, and the NW5 terraces have been altered repeatedly since the 1970s. When the plaster comes off it is common to find a knock-through sitting on a beam nobody designed, a chimney breast taken out at ground level with the stack above resting on brackets, or joists notched half through for a pipe run. None of that stops a project. It does mean the survey matters more than the mood board, and the first task is finding out what is actually holding it up, which decides the job.

The valuation list shows roughly 8,940 homes in Kentish Town, of which 44% are pre-1919, 4% interwar and 52% post-1945, split 87% flats to 13% houses. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for Kentish Town West and Kentish Town East. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Putting earlier alterations right is its own job

The pattern repeats across the neighbourhood. Openings were formed between reception rooms without padstones, so beam ends have been crushing brickwork for thirty years. Breasts were taken out floor by floor with nothing picking up the stack. Wall plates were cut away for a boiler flue. Sometimes the work is sound and simply undocumented. Either way it is assessed before new work is built on top, and that is a structural engineer's job rather than a builder's opinion. We arrange the survey and price any remedial work openly once the design comes back.

Remedial support is usually straightforward once designed: a proper padstone under a bearing or a replacement beam sized for the load, which is RSJ installation work, or a steel to carry a stack left hanging, which is chimney breast removal work. Where past alterations were never notified, Camden Council can consider a regularisation application, bringing unauthorised work into the building control system retrospectively, worth doing well before you sell. We coordinate that application and its inspections, and nothing is covered up until the inspector has seen it. Where an opening was formed correctly but never recorded, the remedy is paperwork rather than brickwork.

The standard NW5 terrace kept as a house

Underneath the alterations, these houses are the same animal. Two rooms deep with a rear closet wing, solid nine inch brickwork, suspended timber floors over a ventilated void, lath and plaster to walls and ceilings, and a small garden behind. Doing one properly is a home renovation job: lifting floors to inspect and replace joist ends where damp has reached them, clearing airbricks rendered over or buried by raised ground levels, renewing electrics and plumbing while the fabric is open, and replastering to suit solid walls rather than trapping moisture in them.

Working here is a street problem as much as a building one. Parking around Kentish Town Road and the residential streets by Talacre Gardens is controlled, there is no rear access to most terraces, and everything from the first barrow of spoil to the last kitchen unit passes through the front door. Skip permits and bay suspensions are applied for in advance. Deliveries come in loads a small vehicle can bring, floors and the staircase are protected before work starts, and the frontage is swept at the end of each day.

Where to go next for work in Kentish Town: kitchen renovation in Kentish Town, house extensions in Kentish Town, the Camden area guide, building work in Camden Town, building work in Holloway and How to Choose a Builder.