The estate
A private freehold estate of Victorian terraced buildings in Kentish Town, in the London Borough of Camden: more than forty buildings along one street and its corners, with shops at street level and over 170 flats above. The freeholder has instructed the practice through its managing agents since the mid 1990s.
The brief
Keep a whole street of mixed use buildings working and earning: turn tired upper parts into good homes, adapt shops for new tenants, deal with structure, roofs and services as they fail, and protect the freeholder’s position at every lease end. One building at a time, for thirty years.
What we did
From the first underpinning and refurbishment contracts in the late 1990s to a roof renewal in 2024, the practice has designed, specified, tendered and administered 28 building contracts on the estate, alongside planning, party wall, CDM and dilapidations work.
- Upper parts converted to flatsUpper floors reconfigured into self contained flats, often with new roofs and rear dormers: five flats over one shop, six over another with a new roof and rear extension, and three or four at a time across a dozen more buildings.
- Shops combined and fitted outThree shop widths joined for a national supermarket, with enabling, structural and services works and new water mains to the eight flats above; two shops combined into one restaurant; shell works and shopfronts for incoming tenants.
- Top storeys rebuilt and roofs extendedA third floor and gable demolished and rebuilt with a new roof and dormer; a new studio formed in a roof extension; a maisonette turned into four flats with roof, dormer and piled rear extensions.
- Structure and roofsUnderpinning, dry rot eradication, boundary walls, and in 2024 the rear roofs over the supermarket renewed with tapered insulation to improved falls, let at £80,611 and closed £5,000 under.
- Leases, planning and party wallsTerminal schedules of dilapidations at lease ends, planning permissions for conversions, extensions and changes of use, party wall awards, lease plans and a licensing record for every building.
The standards
Works were administered under JCT Minor Works contracts, with designer and principal designer duties under the CDM Regulations, adjoining owners served under the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, and lease end claims prepared to the RICS professional standard on dilapidations.
Twenty eight contracts on one street, and the client is still instructing.
The outcome
A street of tired Victorian upper parts turned, building by building, into well kept homes over trading shops, with every contract taken to a final certificate and every building’s history held in one place.
Read more about our Building Surveyor Services, contract administration and planning services.
