Building work in Streatham: area guide

This is our area guide to building work in Streatham (SW16, Lambeth): the housing, the council rules that apply (Lambeth Council for planning) and every service we offer here. For whole-house refurbishment go to Home renovation in Streatham.

Streatham's houses lean Edwardian rather than Victorian, and that difference is worth understanding before you draw a new layout. Frontages tend to be wider, bays squarer, rooms better lit and roofs more often hipped, while the long parades along Streatham High Road add flats above shops. Most SW16 homes are flats, on VOA figures, so the freeholder is often the first gate. Between Streatham Common, the Rookery and Streatham station you find both extremes on the same walk. GS Renovation covers SW16 without holding premises here, so you get a contractor who plans the access.

The Council Tax list puts Streatham at about 27,640 homes, 67% flats against 33% houses; 43% went up before 1919, 27% between the wars and 29% after 1945. VOA Council Tax stock of properties, March 2025, for all 7 statistical areas in Streatham. Counts rounded by the VOA.

Edwardian houses in SW16 open up well once the beam is designed

Where you own the house, an Edwardian one here generally gives you more to work with than its Victorian neighbour. Rooms are wider, the hall more generous, and the rear often already stepped rather than a bare closet wing, so opening the ground floor as an open-plan conversion produces a genuinely usable space. The construction is still mostly solid masonry with timber floors and a cut roof, so any wall taken out is load-bearing wall removal with a beam designed by an engineer we appoint. We build precisely to the design and never write the calculations ourselves.

The defects follow the type. Square Edwardian bays sit on their own shallow footings and carry a lintel over the opening, and where that lintel is timber it can sag and drop the brickwork above, cracking the reveals. Hipped roofs spread outwards when purlin support has been removed by an earlier conversion. And many SW16 houses have had a rear wall opened by a previous owner with no record at all. We open up, inspect and photograph these areas at survey, because a beam priced on assumption is a beam priced wrongly.

Flats above the shops on Streatham High Road put the compartment floor first

A flat over a working shop is a different building to work in. There is normally one street door, no rear access worth using, no lift, and a business below whose trading hours dictate when noisy work can happen. Materials come up a single staircase, which rules out long lengths of steel unless the engineer can specify sections that turn the corners, so we measure that stair before anything is ordered. Waste comes back down the same way. We agree a schedule with the occupier below rather than arriving and hoping, and protect the shared entrance every day we are there.

Fire separation is the technical point people miss in a mixed use building. The floor between a commercial unit and the flat above is a compartment floor, and drilling it for pipes or downlights, or cutting into it for a bathroom renovation, has to be reinstated to keep that separation intact. Escape routes and alarm arrangements come under Part B. Add the leasehold layer, where a freeholder's licence to alter comes before design and permitted development rights do not exist, and the paperwork sequence matters as much as the trowel work. We coordinate the building control side with Lambeth Council throughout.

Where to go next for work in Streatham: kitchen renovation in Streatham, house extensions in Streatham, the Lambeth area guide, building work in Balham, building work in Tooting and How to Choose a Builder.