Building work in Old Street: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Old Street (EC1, N1, Islington): the housing, the council rules that apply (Islington Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Old Street.

The residential blocks that went up around the Old Street roundabout over the last two decades are a different proposition to the older EC1 conversions near Bunhill Fields and Whitecross Street Market. They are framed in concrete, partitioned in plasterboard on metal studs, served by risers, and wired into building-wide detection and access systems. The job is less about structure than working correctly inside a managed environment, so the usual route is a kitchen renovation or bathroom renovation, not steel. GS Renovation front-loads the paperwork: insurance certificates, method of working, and one point of contact the building manager can reach.

Around 6,800 homes make up Old Street on the valuation list; 99% are flats and 1% houses, and 16% date from before 1919, 5% from between the wars and 76% from after 1945. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for Old Street & St Luke's. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Inside a managed building, risers decide the job

Before any tool arrives, the building has requirements of its own. Most managed blocks want to see the contractor's public liability cover, an outline of the works, agreed working hours, a booked service lift, a nominated waste route and confirmation that nothing touches fire compartmentation, sprinkler heads or detection without formal approval. We supply that pack up front rather than assembling it under pressure on the first morning, because a refused access request costs a week. Lobbies, lift cars and corridors are protected before materials move through them, and inspected with the building manager at start and handover.

Inside the flat, the framing tells you which job is possible. Partitions on metal studs come out readily, so most open-plan conversions are straightforward. Core walls and anything enclosing a riser do not, and the position of the soil stack effectively fixes where wet rooms can sit. Where an alteration approaches anything structural, it becomes a structural alteration job: the freeholder's consent and a structural engineer's design come first and we build only to that drawing. Notifiable work is registered with Islington Council building control or a registered building control approver, and we arrange the inspections and hand over the certification with the completion file.

Where the real gains are in a framed flat: the fit-out

When the walls, risers and drainage are largely fixed, the difference between a flat that works and one that irritates you daily comes down to what is built into it. Developer-standard kitchens and wet rooms in these blocks were specified to a schedule, not to how you cook or how many people queue for the shower at eight in the morning. Replacing them, and building joinery to the millimetre into every awkward recess, a wardrobe wall, a utility cupboard housing the appliances, a hallway that finally holds coats and a hoover, changes daily life in the flat far more than the floor plan would.

A bathroom renovation deserves particular care here because yours sits directly above somebody else's home. Full tanking to the walls and floor before tiling, correct falls to the drain and a properly built substrate are the difference between a waterproof room and an expensive conversation with a neighbour. Acoustic underlay to the terms of the lease, lighting circuits split so a whole room is not on one switch, and additional sockets placed where furniture actually goes all belong in the same programme, since the floor and the walls are only open once. Doing any of it later means lifting finishes you have already paid to have laid.

Where to go next for work in Old Street: kitchen renovation in Old Street, house extensions in Old Street, the Islington area guide, building work in Shoreditch, building work in Hoxton and Building Regulations Explained.