Building work in New Barnet: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in New Barnet (EN5, EN4, Barnet): the housing, the council rules that apply (Barnet Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in New Barnet.

New Barnet gives you quite different houses on neighbouring streets. The Victorian terraces near the station and East Barnet Road have rear additions, side returns and closet wings, while the interwar semis around Victoria Recreation Ground have bays, hipped roofs and a separate kitchen at the back, and the post-war houses and flats that now make up about half the stock have cavity walls and concrete floors. Each routes to a different job because the structure behind the plaster differs. We survey before quoting, appoint the structural engineer for anything carrying weight, and handle the Barnet Council building control application and inspections.

The stock in the New Barnet and Hadley Wood statistical areas runs to roughly 10,670 dwellings, 50% of them flats and 50% houses, built 17% before 1919, 32% between 1919 and 1939 and 52% after 1945. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for the New Barnet and Hadley Wood statistical areas, which also take in East Barnet and Hadley Wood. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Two kinds of house in EN4, two kinds of job

On the Victorian terraces space is found sideways and backwards. Infilling the side return beside the rear addition is a house extension, turning a narrow galley into a room the full width of the plot, and the wall between addition and main house comes out onto a beam sized for both structures.

On the interwar semis the gain is nearly always the through opening between front and rear reception rooms, which is load-bearing wall removal, with a garage or side passage as the second opportunity. The wall carries the floor above and often a partition upstairs, so the beam is designed for both, not the span alone.

The rear addition is where the problems live, so it is surveyed first

Rear additions here are the oldest working part of the house. The roof is often shallow, recovered more than once, with poor falls and no insulation, and the walls beneath are thinner than the main body. Opening the wall into it is RSJ installation designed with that structure rather than around it.

Where the addition is altered anyway, rebuilding its roof at the same time corrects the falls, adds insulation and can take a rooflight. As a separate job later it means opening the same part of the house twice and paying for access twice.

Getting steel work delivered on a busy road by the station

Frontages near the station and main roads have controlled parking and steady traffic, so a delivery cannot simply pull up. Bays are suspended where available, loads timed away from the busiest hours, and where a long steel section cannot reach the frontage the engineer is asked at design stage for a spliced beam.

Further from the main roads the streets are quieter and the constraint is parked cars rather than traffic. Either way the route into the house is measured before the RSJ is ordered, because a beam that reaches the kerb and no further is an expensive delay.

Where to go next for work in New Barnet: house extensions in New Barnet, the Barnet area guide, building work in East Barnet, building work in Hadley Wood and How to Choose a Builder.