Building work in New Cross: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in New Cross (SE14, Lewisham): the housing, the council rules that apply (Lewisham Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in New Cross.

Most SE14 homes are flats, on VOA figures, but a great many of the houses that exist have spent the last thirty years as shared lets, and the work we are asked for is frequently about undoing that. Bedsit partitions, spare kitchenettes, mismatched fire doors and wiring layered up over several decades all come out before a sensible family plan can go back in. Add the streets climbing towards Telegraph Hill Park and the postwar infill dropped between older runs near New Cross Road, and no two houses within a hundred metres are the same. We cover SE14 as a service area business.

By the valuation list's count, New Cross holds about 12,080 homes, 28% houses and 72% flats; by age, 43% were built before 1919, 2% between the wars and 49% since 1945. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for New Cross Gate, New Cross South and Telegraph Hill. Counts rounded by the VOA.

A shared let back to a house starts with finding which walls carry load

Stripping out is the honest first phase, and it takes longer than people expect. Stud partitions come down, redundant kitchenettes and their unused pipe runs are removed, ceilings overboarded for fire separation come off, and the wiring is traced back to a board that has usually been extended more than once. What we will not do is assume a partition is non-structural because it looks flimsy. Original spine walls get boxed and skimmed until they resemble later work, so anything suspect is opened up and referred to the structural engineer we appoint, and if it carries load it becomes a load-bearing wall removal.

With the house back to a shell the plan can be rebuilt properly rather than patched: a new consumer unit and full rewire, replumbing, replastering and a coherent circulation route, then the ground floor opened up with steel designed by the engineer. That breadth is a home renovation job, and sequencing is everything: one person keeps first fix ahead of plaster and plaster ahead of the kitchen. Electrical work is notifiable under Part P, and we coordinate the building control applications and inspections with Lewisham Council alongside the structural sign-off.

Postwar infill near Goldsmiths is opened differently from Victorian brick

Walk any street near Goldsmiths and you pass solid brick Victorian terracing interrupted by houses rebuilt after the war on entirely different principles. Those infill properties often have cavity walls, concrete floors at ground level, standardised joist spans and sometimes a concrete lintel or beam already doing structural work. They are not harder to alter, but an RSJ method that suits nine inch solid brick will be wrong here. In the flats that make up most of SE14, freeholder consent comes before any structural change, and a bathroom renovation turns on the shared soil stack. We identify the construction at survey.

The ground makes its own contribution around Telegraph Hill, where streets climb sharply and rear gardens step up or fall away behind the house. For house extensions, levels between the existing floor and the garden are resolved at design stage, retaining structures may be needed at a boundary, and surface water needs somewhere deliberate to go. Foundation depth is set by the structural engineer taking account of the slope, the subsoil and any nearby trees, and we excavate to that detail with building control inspecting the trench before concrete is poured.

Where to go next for work in New Cross: kitchen renovation in New Cross, house extensions in New Cross, the Lewisham area guide, building work in Deptford, building work in Peckham and Renovation Mistakes to Avoid.