Builders and developers in Hampton, TW12

Hampton runs from the river inland. The waterside holds the best of it, Garrick's Villa and the Temple among a group of listed buildings looking onto the Thames, with Georgian and Victorian houses along the road behind. Hampton Hill is a Victorian and Edwardian high street with residential above and terraces off it, and the streets towards Bushy Park and Fulwell fill in with interwar and post-war housing on good plots.

The work divides between the village centres and the houses. In the centres it is mixed-use: flats created above and behind trading premises, with the commercial floorspace retained. Away from them it is extensions, loft conversions and full refurbishment on solid suburban stock, and careful repair where a property is listed or sits within the riverside group.

Hampton sits with Richmond upon Thames, and the Hampton Village, riverside and Hampton Hill designations cover the historic centres, with listing concentrated along the Thames. Richmond publishes householder guidance and applies it, so an extension is expected to be subordinate to the original building and to keep a side space at the boundary. Away from the designated streets, permitted-development rights largely survive.

In a village centre the policy that shapes a development is the protection of the ground floor. The council resists the loss of commercial floorspace in designated frontages, so a mixed-use building being converted usually keeps a unit at street level and gains homes above and behind it. That is a better scheme than it sounds, but it has to be designed for from the start, because retro-fitting a separate residential access and a fire strategy around a retained shop is not straightforward.