Builders for Maida Vale Mansion Blocks, Stucco Villas and W9 Flats

Read this before you commission any drawings.

Since 31 July 2016 there is no permitted development route to a basement anywhere in Westminster. Every scheme is a full planning application, assessed against the council’s basement policy, which is restrictive on depth and on the proportion of garden that may be built beneath.

Westminster operates a pre-application advice service, and householder basement enquiries are charged at a higher rate than ordinary householder advice — which tells you something about the level of scrutiny involved. For a scheme of any ambition it is money well spent.

We will give you an honest reading of whether a basement is realistic at your address before you spend anything on design. Sometimes the answer is no, and hearing it early is worth more than a set of drawings that will not be approved.

How We Price and Run W9 Work

We do not publish a rate per square metre, because in Maida Vale the variables that move a price are not floor area. They are the consent position, the lease, the access, and the condition of a building that is frequently more than a century old.

Access is the one people underestimate. Mansion blocks impose working hours, lift restrictions, protection requirements for common parts and defined routes for materials and waste. A job that would be straightforward in a terraced house takes materially longer here, and any price that ignores it is not a real price.

What you get is a written, itemised scope with a fixed sum against it and the contingency stated plainly. Payment runs as a modest deposit, staged releases against completed work, and a balance at handover — never a large sum in advance, and never in cash.

During the build: one project manager, one programme, every trade ours, and progress you do not have to chase. At the end, building control sign-off, the certificates and warranties, snagging resolved properly, and a guarantee behind the workmanship. Completed work is in the gallery. We work throughout W9 — Maida Vale, Little Venice, Warwick Avenue and Maida Hill — and across the neighbouring Westminster and north-west London postcodes.

Ask whether they have read your lease

In a postcode this heavily leasehold, a builder who talks only about planning permission has not understood the job. Licence to alter runs in parallel, costs money, takes time, and can restrict the design in ways the council never would.

Ask what they know about the basement direction

If anyone suggests a basement or lightwell might proceed under permitted development, that has been wrong in Westminster since July 2016. It is a straightforward test of whether they work here often.

Ask how they will handle the building, not just the flat

Working hours, lift access, protection of common parts, waste routes, party wall notices to several neighbours at once. In a mansion block the building sets the terms, and a programme that ignores them will slip.

Tell Us the Address

Give us the address and what you would like to achieve. We will tell you which consents apply, which are likely to be straightforward and which are not, and what the work realistically involves — before you commit to anything at all.

Get in touch to arrange a survey and a fixed-price quotation.