Building work in Soho: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Soho (W1, Westminster): the housing, the council rules that apply (Westminster City Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Soho.

Almost every Soho flat we work on sits above a business that stays open while we work, and that single fact drives everything else. The buildings around Dean Street, Berwick Street Market and towards Carnaby Street are period terraces that were never residential the way a suburban street is: trade at ground level, storage above it, flats above that, all altered repeatedly for two centuries. Nothing is where a drawing says it is. Every job here starts by opening up and looking, because assuming a standard arrangement in W1 is how budgets come apart in week two.

Count the homes in the Fitzrovia West & Soho statistical area and you get about 6,840: 47% built since 1945, 5% between the wars and 48% before 1919, with flats at 98% and houses at 2%. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for the Fitzrovia West & Soho statistical area, which also covers west Fitzrovia. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Above a trading ground floor, fire separation first

Fire separation between the commercial floor and the flats above is the issue that comes up most, and the one most often missed. Ceilings have been altered, service penetrations cut and never sealed, original lath and plaster replaced piecemeal. Any job that opens a floor, such as a bathroom renovation, is the chance to put that right, and building control will look at it. We coordinate the application and the inspections, and raise a compartmentation problem while the ceiling is down rather than quietly boarding over it. Doing it once, properly, is cheaper than being asked for it later.

Noise runs the other way too. A restaurant extract below a bedroom, deliveries at six in the morning and late trading are all part of the building, and opening the floors is the moment to improve their acoustic performance and upgrade glazing where the lease allows it. Most flats around Soho Square are leasehold, so the freeholder's written consent comes before the design is fixed, and the lease often imposes working hours tighter than anything the council would require. Agreeing hours before the design is settled avoids an awkward conversation in week one.

Two centuries of alteration behind every Soho wall

Soho buildings have been subdivided, joined, partly rebuilt and reconfigured so often that an internal wall tells you little from the surface. A plastered partition may be a modern stud, a brick wall carrying two floors, or a timber frame packed with rubble. Only the first is a plain open-plan conversion job, so a structural engineer is appointed early with real access, not assumptions. We open up, they survey, and the beam and bearing design for any load-bearing wall removal comes from them. We install to it and prop while load transfers. Nothing is cut until that design is in our hands.

Floor levels rarely match between rooms, staircases are steeper and narrower than modern standards allow, and services from four different decades often share one void. A realistic budget here allows for what appears once the finishes come off. We price the known work firmly and identify the unknowns openly rather than burying them in a headline figure, and one person means decisions about whatever has just been uncovered get made quickly instead of holding up the trades. An old building punishes assumption, and the programme reflects it.

Materials in and waste out through one street door

There is no rear access, no driveway and frequently no lift. Everything reaches a Soho flat through a street door and a narrow shared stair, so materials arrive in small loads inside a loading window, and for an RSJ installation the steel's route is planned before ordering. Waste leaves bagged, by hand, at agreed times. A skip needs a permit from Westminster City Council and on many of these streets it is simply not workable. That sets the pace of the entire job and belongs in the programme from day one. Underestimating it is the commonest reason a flat here runs late.

The stair and the entrance get protected before anything else happens, because they are shared and because damage to them is the fastest way to sour a relationship with the freeholder. Deliveries are timed around trading hours below. Dust is contained at source rather than chased around afterwards. The managing agent will want our insurance in writing along with our method and hours before the first delivery turns up. We would rather over protect a shared stair than repair one, and the cost of doing so is trivial beside the goodwill it buys.

Where to go next for work in Soho: kitchen renovation in Soho, house extensions in Soho, the Westminster area guide, building work in Mayfair, building work in Bloomsbury and Listed Building Renovation.