Building work in Romford: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Romford (RM1, RM7, Havering): the housing, the council rules that apply (Havering Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Romford.

Work in RM1 falls into two clear groups. There are the interwar semis on the residential streets away from the centre, and there are the newer flats and houses built closer to Romford station and the Liberty shopping centre. The two route to different jobs: one deals with brick, timber and a load path drawn eighty years ago, the other with frames, management companies and partitions that carry nothing at all. We take on both, from the streets near Raphael Park across to the roads behind Romford Market.

For Romford the Council Tax list gives about 20,230 homes; by type 35% flats and 65% houses, by age 43% post-war, 42% interwar and 15% older than 1919. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 5 statistical areas in Romford. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Interwar semis and the ground floor everyone wants changed, wall first

The standard 1930s plan gives you a hall, a front reception with a bay, a rear reception and a small kitchen with a larder beside it, and almost every quote in Romford is for joining those last two into one space. That is load-bearing wall removal first: the wall typically carries first floor joists and often has the chimney breast built into it, so it needs a designed beam with bearings taken properly into the flanking walls, and a chimney breast removal decision on whether the breast goes at both levels or only downstairs.

The complication is what was added later. Many of these back rooms were extended in the 1960s or 1970s onto foundations that would not be accepted today, sometimes a single skin of brick under a flat roof. A new beam cannot simply bear onto that. We open up and check the bearing before pricing, and where the addition cannot carry load the honest options are rebuilding it as a house extension job or bringing the new support back into the original structure. Meter positions, the boiler and the soil stack all move around that decision too.

Newer homes, management companies and partitions near the centre

Renovating a modern flat or house near the town centre is a different discipline. The frame carries the loads, so most internal walls are metal or timber stud that carry nothing, and the ones that matter are few and obvious once you know where the frame runs. Floors are concrete, which limits chasing and drilling, and some buildings restrict cutting into slabs at all. The building's own rules on working hours, lift use, waste routes and contractor insurance apply on top of anything the council requires.

In practice that shapes the scope. A kitchen or bathroom renovation here is designed around the existing service positions, because waste has to fall to a fixed riser and extract has to reach a permitted outlet. A wet room over a concrete slab has to be tanked properly since there is no forgiveness in a block. We confirm what the management company will permit before drawing anything, arrange the building control notification for notifiable work, and put one point of contact between you and everybody else involved. That single point of contact matters more in a managed building than anywhere else.

Where to go next for work in Romford: house extensions in Romford, the Havering area guide, building work in Chadwell Heath, building work in Hornchurch and Renovation Mistakes to Avoid.