Flat Renovations near you

Most long leases divide alterations into three bands: things you may do freely, things you may do with the landlord's written consent, and things the lease prohibits outright. Structural work, removing or forming walls, altering floors, moving a bathroom or kitchen over a neighbour's living space, changing windows and anything touching the common parts or the building's services are the items most often in the middle band, and the consent is normally documented in a licence to alter - a deed between you and the freeholder recording the approved drawings and the conditions attached. Where a lease makes consent subject to the landlord not unreasonably withholding it, section 19(2) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 is the provision that does the work, and it is explained in our joinery and handyman guides rather than repeated here.

What is worth knowing is what happens if you do not ask. Section 168 of the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act 2002 stops a landlord under a long lease of a dwelling serving a forfeiture notice under section 146 of the Law of Property Act 1925 unless the breach has been finally determined, admitted by the tenant, or finally determined by a court or arbitral tribunal. A landlord who believes you have breached the alterations covenant applies to the appropriate tribunal - the First-tier Tribunal or Upper Tribunal for a dwelling in England - for a determination that the breach has occurred, and a notice cannot be served until fourteen days after that determination becomes final.

In practice the sanction that bites is not forfeiture but sale. A buyer's solicitor asks for the licence to alter, the retrospective consent or a deed of variation, and an unconsented alteration becomes a price negotiation or a delayed completion. Retrospective consent is usually obtainable, and almost always more expensive and slower than asking first.

Three technical questions dominate a flat refurbishment and all three are about the neighbours. Sound insulation between flats is governed by Approved Document E in England and Wales and is covered in our flooring guide; the practical consequence for a refurbishment is that replacing a carpet with a hard floor is the single most common cause of a complaint, and many leases deal with it expressly by requiring carpet or an approved acoustic layer.

Fire is the second. In a purpose-built or converted block, the flat entrance door and the compartment walls and floors around you are part of the building's fire strategy, not part of your interior scheme. Replacing a flat entrance door, forming an opening in a compartment wall, or running services through one are all matters to raise with the building's responsible person before anybody orders materials. The duties that fall on that responsible person under the Fire Safety (England) Regulations 2022 are set out in our joinery and handyman guides.

Services are the third. The cold water riser, the soil stack, the heating distribution in a communal system and the electrical rising main all serve other homes, and isolating any of them is a building-wide event that usually needs notice. A refurbishment programme that assumes the water can be off on a Tuesday because the plumber is free is a programme that will slip.

The first is discovering mid-strip that the wall you planned to remove is a compartment wall, a structural wall, or both, and that the drawings the freeholder holds do not match what is actually there. Converted houses are the worst offenders, because the conversion itself may be decades old and may never have been properly recorded.

The second is water. A leak from a flat runs downwards into somebody else's home and becomes an insurance claim across two policies and two leases. Pressure testing before the floors go back, isolating properly rather than trusting a valve nobody has turned for twenty years, and being present for the first refill are all cheap compared with the alternative.

The third is time. A refurbishment in a house can absorb a bad week; a refurbishment in a flat cannot, because the constraints are external. Restricted hours, booked lifts, limited parking and a neighbour who works nights all stretch the same scope of work over a longer period, and a quotation built on house productivity will not survive contact with the building.

Prices for flat work move on access and constraint before they move on finishes. What matters is which floor you are on and whether there is a lift, how materials and waste get in and out, how many hours a day the building allows noisy work, whether the layout change is structural or cosmetic, whether services have to be isolated for the whole block, what the lease and the licence to alter require by way of acoustic treatment, and how much of the existing wiring and pipework is being kept. The same kitchen costs differently on the ground floor and on the fifth.

LokalMatch exists to make the introduction. Describe the flat once, with your postcode, what you want changed and any constraints the building imposes, and contractors who work in your area will contact you. There is no charge to homeowners; the pros pay to receive enquiries. LokalMatch does not do the work, does not set prices, and does not vet, rank or recommend the businesses that reply - references, insurance and their experience of leasehold buildings are yours to check.