Office fit out in Fitzrovia W1

What you are fitting out in Fitzrovia

Georgian terraces with C19 and C20 interventions, post-war infill, and a good deal of upper-floor office space over retail and restaurants. Floor plates are small and irregular, staircases are original, and the services were added to buildings that never anticipated them.

Media, advertising, architecture and design practices, and the professional services that sit alongside them. Briefs lean towards studio space, meeting rooms that can be closed, and a reception that carries a portfolio — with acoustic separation the recurring problem, because the buildings are shared and the neighbours are often residential.

The constraint that sets the programme

Narrow streets, heavy restaurant servicing competing for the same kerb, permit parking and short loading windows. No goods lift in most of the stock. Where residential sits above or beside the demise, working hours are set more tightly than any consent requires, and that is usually enforced as a condition of access rather than argued about afterwards.

Who decides, and what needs consent

This is the field that matters here, and the answer is not one council. Camden’s conservation areas include Charlotte Street and Fitzroy Square, and its conservation-area Article 4 Directions remove permitted development rights from houses and flats — a narrower scope than an office occupier tends to assume. Westminster has 56 conservation areas, has removed permitted development rights in eight, and has an Article 4 Direction withdrawing the Class E to C3 change of use. And since 10 August 2026 a third body decides part of it: the Oxford Street Development Corporation took over as local planning authority for the Oxford Street area, and Camden’s own notice says the borough is ‘no longer the Local Planning Authority’ for applications there. Establish which of the three your address falls to before anyone draws anything — it decides the pre-application route, the conservation officer and the timetable.

A fit-out normally answers to three separate things: your landlord’s licence to alter, building regulations where services or fire strategy change, and planning only where the outside of the building or its use changes. They run on different clocks and the licence is the one most often discovered late.

What we are usually asked for in Fitzrovia

• Cat B fit-out of a small upper-floor demise
• Studio and meeting-room layouts with acoustic separation that is tested, not assumed
• Bespoke reception and storage joinery from our own workshop
• Seamless resin floors over existing screed, carried in by hand
• Reinstatement at lease end on a shared period building

Partitions, joinery and glazing come from our own companies rather than a chain of subcontractors, which is why the timing and the warranty stay in one place. The low-waste method — refinishing over what is already there — is what makes most of this workable in an occupied building.

Which council do we apply to for a Fitzrovia office alteration?

Establish it from the address rather than assuming, because there are three possible answers. Camden has conservation areas here — Charlotte Street and Fitzroy Square — Westminster has its own, and since 10 August 2026 the Oxford Street Development Corporation is the local planning authority for the Oxford Street area, with Camden recording that the borough is ‘no longer the Local Planning Authority’ there. Most internal fit-out needs no planning application from any of them, because the consent that governs it is the landlord’s licence to alter. Signage, plant, external alterations and change of use do, and the regimes differ — so the answer to ‘do we need permission’ moves with the address, not just with the work.

A floor area cannot price a fit-out.

We walk the floor, look at what is already there and what can be kept, and tell you what the access regime does to the programme. Free, and it is the only honest way to put a number on Fitzrovia space.

All office fit-out services · The low-waste method