Home Improvements
in Sutton

Sutton is the London borough that sits hard against the Surrey border, and in many ways its housing has more in common with the Surrey towns around it than with inner London. Its southern edge meets Epsom and Ewell and Reigate and Banstead, and the borough takes in Sutton town centre along with Cheam, Carshalton, Wallington, Beddington, Hackbridge, Belmont and part of Worcester Park. For us it is a natural extension of our work in Epsom and Kingston, both of which lie just over the boundary.

The housing is dominated by the suburban growth of the 1920s and 1930s. Street after street of semi-detached houses in North Cheam, Wallington, Carshalton Beeches and Worcester Park were built with side access, often with a garage or room for one, and many of them with hipped roofs. That combination shapes what is possible. A hip-to-gable loft conversion with a rear dormer, a single-storey rear extension across the width of the house, and a garage conversion or side extension are the projects these houses most often suit. Closer to Sutton town centre and in parts of Carshalton and Wallington, Victorian and Edwardian houses bring a different set of questions: solid walls, suspended timber floors and original features that deserve to be kept. The interwar cottage estate at St Helier, which straddles the boundary with Merton, has compact homes that are usually better suited to a careful rear extension or an internal reconfiguration than to anything larger.

Planning applications here are decided by the London Borough of Sutton. Many single-storey rear extensions and loft conversions on houses fall within Permitted Development, but permission may be required depending on the size of the proposal, whether the house has been extended before, and where it sits. The borough has a number of conservation areas, including the historic village centres of Carshalton and Cheam, where alterations visible from the street are looked at more closely and some permitted development rights may be restricted. Homes close to the River Wandle, one arm of which rises at Carshalton, may also need a flood risk assessment. We establish the position for your address before any design work begins, and prepare and submit the application where one is needed.

The projects that suit Sutton's housing best follow from all of this: loft conversions that can turn a hipped roof into a full bedroom and bathroom, rear extensions that open the kitchen to the garden, and garage conversions on the interwar semis where the garage has long since stopped holding a car. We also take on complete renovations of the older houses nearer the centre. Every project is billed weekly for completed, signed-off work, with no large deposit at the outset, and it starts with a free, itemised Cost Proposal.