Steel staircases in South London, from Bromley to the Thames

What South London's housing asks of a steel staircase

Bromley, Croydon, Sutton and Merton are house boroughs, six households in ten or more, and the interwar semis at Beckenham, Orpington, Petts Wood, Purley, Raynes Park and Morden sit on generous plots with side access. Rear extensions and loft conversions add space there and in the yellow stock-brick terraces of Merton Park and Colliers Wood, so our usual outer-borough job is an external steel stair from a new first-floor room or roof terrace to the garden. Large detached houses on the hills at Purley, Coulsdon, Kenley, Selsdon, Bickley and Chislehurst take garden staircases.

Nearer the river the stock turns over. Purpose-built flats hold 64 per cent of Southwark households, 52 per cent in Lambeth and 48 per cent in Wandsworth, one Lambeth household in five lives in a converted house, and only Streatham Vale, Herne Hill, Dulwich Park and East Dulwich remain majority-house neighbourhoods there. The calls there are fire escape and access stairs and balconies off upper flats.

Fire escapes on flats and converted houses

Flats and maisonettes carry no householder permitted development rights, so an external staircase, fire escape or balcony on a block in Peckham or a converted house in Stockwell goes in as a planning application, and a stair serving the common parts needs Building Regulations approval. Approved Document B allows an external escape stair to serve a flat if the doors onto it are fire-resisting and self-closing, the construction beside it resists fire and the flight is protected from snow and ice; those details are fixed at our survey. A block of seven storeys or 18 metres with two or more homes, which takes in the riverside towers at Nine Elms and Bermondsey, is a higher-risk building whose approval comes from the Building Safety Regulator before work starts. Where a fire escape is part of an HMO conversion, the borough-wide Article 4 directions in Croydon, Greenwich, Bromley and Sutton, and in 20 Merton wards, mean a change-of-use application goes in alongside.

Conservation areas, Article 4 directions and the 0.3 metre rule

Boroughs, not the Mayor, decide householder applications. On a house, Class A permitted development excludes balconies and any raised platform above 0.3 metres, so national guidance treats an external stair with a landing as needing permission while a Juliet balcony with no platform normally does not. Lambeth has 62 conservation areas covering about 30 per cent of the borough; Southwark 48, Bromley 47, Wandsworth 46, Greenwich 23, Croydon 21, Lewisham and Merton around 29 each. Maritime Greenwich and the Kent Downs corner of Bromley by our boundary are article 2(3) land.

Article 4 directions remove what is left: nine in Lambeth, Stockwell Park and Vauxhall among them; eight in Wandsworth, including Shaftesbury Park Estate and Wandsworth Common; Chatsworth Road, The Waldrons and Kenley Aerodrome in Croydon; Bickley, Petts Wood and Chelsfield Park in Bromley; John Innes Merton Park and Wilton Crescent in Merton. Anything fixed to a listed house needs listed building consent, and we check the directions before drawing.

The drive from Westerham Hill, and what the site allows

The A233 runs past our door into the London Borough of Bromley at Westerham Heights and on north through Biggin Hill, its only main road. Bromley town is 10.4 miles and about 25 minutes; Croydon 10.6 miles and 21; Lewisham 29; Sutton 31; Greenwich 34; Brixton and Wimbledon about 36; Wandsworth 41; and Southwark, at 18.5 miles, 45, all route-planner figures that lengthen at peak times. Croydon is also 5.9 miles from Warlingham and Sutton 8.3, inside the ten-mile circle we cover from there. Every borough sits in the ULEZ, and Bankside, Borough, Waterloo and Vauxhall are in the Congestion Charge zone, so inner-London deliveries are timed around its hours.

A semi with side access in Petts Wood or Raynes Park receives a fully welded flight straight off the van. A Victorian terrace in Thornton Heath or Colliers Wood, or an upper flat in Battersea, gets a bolted sectional stair carried through the building and assembled at the back.

Railings, balustrades and gates, kept brief

Railings and gates take up less of our South London diary than stairs, but the same local rules shape them. Along the London stock-brick terraces of Lewisham, Greenwich and north Croydon a dwarf wall topped with railings is the street pattern, and Lewisham's Alterations and Extensions SPD calls it integral to its Victorian and Edwardian streets, so we copy the original bars rather than propose a tall gate; Croydon's character typologies list large front gates as a negative alteration on its large-house hills. Gates and railings stay permitted development to 1 metre beside a road used by vehicles and 2 metres elsewhere unless an Article 4 direction or a listed building removes the right. Balconies on flats carry steel or glass balustrades to Approved Document K, galvanised and powder coated to any RAL colour.

Where we fit steel staircases, borough by borough

In Bromley borough the staircase enquiries come from Bromley, Beckenham, Orpington, Petts Wood, Bickley, Chislehurst, West Wickham, Hayes, Keston, Biggin Hill, Penge and Sydenham. Croydon sends us to Purley, Coulsdon, Kenley, Sanderstead, Selsdon, Shirley, Addiscombe, Thornton Heath, Norbury, South Norwood, Upper Norwood and New Addington, and Sutton to Sutton town, Cheam, Belmont, Carshalton, Wallington, Beddington and Hackbridge. Lewisham work covers Catford, Deptford, Blackheath, Forest Hill, New Cross, Brockley and Ladywell; Royal Greenwich takes in Greenwich, Woolwich, Eltham, Charlton, Plumstead, Kidbrooke, Abbey Wood and Thamesmead. Further in, Southwark means Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Peckham, Camberwell and Dulwich; Lambeth runs the length of its long thin borough from Waterloo and Vauxhall through Kennington, Stockwell, Brixton, Clapham and Herne Hill to Streatham and West Norwood; Wandsworth covers Battersea, Balham, Tooting, Earlsfield, Southfields, Putney and Roehampton; and Merton includes Wimbledon, Mitcham, Morden, Raynes Park, Colliers Wood and Merton Park. Postcodes across the patch run through SE, SW, CR, BR and SM.

Questions from London customers