Do I need a licence to alter just to put down a wooden floor?

Often not, but check your lease first. Replacing carpet with a hard floor is usually treated as non-structural, so it may not need the freeholder's consent under the general rule. The catch is that many flats carry a specific lease term about flooring. Some require consent for any hard floor. Some require carpet to be kept, to limit noise to the flat below. Read that clause before you lift the carpet.

The previous owner did work without consent. Is that now my problem?

Yes, an inherited breach becomes yours. So the useful question is what to do about it. During a purchase, ask your solicitor to check for past alterations and missing licences before you exchange. If something turns up, you can ask the seller to put it right, get a retrospective licence, or arrange an indemnity policy that insures against the risk. Dealing with it before you own the flat is far easier than discovering it when you sell.

Can the freeholder charge me whatever they like?

It depends on the work, and two situations sit apart. For an improvement under a covenant that simply needs consent, no: the freeholder can recover only their reasonable costs and any genuine loss in the value of their interest, not a premium. But where the work touches parts the freeholder owns, such as an external wall, or where your lease bans alterations outright and they agree to waive that, a premium can be charged. There is no legal cap on it, and no tribunal challenge to the amount.

Do I need consent to knock two flats into one?

Yes, almost certainly. Combining two flats is a major structural alteration. It affects the building's structure, and it usually affects more than one lease at once. So it needs the freeholder's consent, and often a new lease or a formal variation of the existing ones. It is one of the most consent-heavy projects in prime central London. It also engages planning permission separately, on top of the freeholder's consent.

Do I need a licence to fit air-conditioning?

Usually yes. Air-conditioning normally needs a condenser unit fixed to an external wall or the roof. Those are parts the freeholder owns, so their consent is almost always required. It can also need planning permission, which is a separate question again. Internal comfort-cooling that touches only your own flat, and nothing the freeholder owns, is a different case, and it still turns on what your lease says.

Licence to Alter: the Consent Most Renovations Forget

The consent everyone forgets

Planning permission is the consent everyone remembers. The licence to alter is the one they forget.

A licence to alter is a formal written consent, usually a deed, from your freeholder, allowing specific alterations to your flat. Your freeholder is the landlord who owns the building. You are the leaseholder, the person who owns a long lease of the flat inside it. Where your lease requires it, the freeholder's written consent is a precondition: the work is not allowed until you have it.

This consent is separate from planning permission and from building regulations. You can hold full planning permission for your scheme and still need the freeholder to say yes. One does not stand in for the other.

So here is the direct answer. Before structural or layout works to a leasehold flat, you usually need a licence to alter, and you need it before the work starts, not during and not after.

It matters because it is the step most renovations leave too late. The cost of getting it wrong does not land during the build. It lands years later, on sale.

One thing to fix in your mind from the start. Whether you need a licence, and on what terms, turns on the wording of your lease. This article gives the general position. Your own answer is in your lease, and a solicitor should read it.

When you need it, what your lease says

Your lease controls alterations through covenants. A covenant is a binding promise written into the lease. There are three kinds, and which one you have decides almost everything.

An absolute covenant bans alterations, or a whole class of them, outright. The freeholder does not have to consider your request, and need not even reply. They may still agree, but on their terms, sometimes for a price or by formally varying the lease. On some managed estates there is a further limit: where every lease promises that the freeholder will enforce the same terms against each flat, the freeholder cannot lawfully permit work in your flat that would breach an absolute covenant in a neighbour's lease. The Supreme Court confirmed this in Duval v 11-13 Randolph Crescent in 2020.

A qualified covenant allows alterations with the landlord's consent. A fully qualified covenant allows them with consent that is not to be unreasonably withheld. The next section explains why that difference matters.

Structural and external works usually need consent even where internal, non-structural works do not. The common triggers are moving or removing walls, changing the size of rooms, moving a kitchen or bathroom and its pipework, often called the wet areas, putting in a new heating system, and replacing windows. The common non-triggers are decorating, moving a radiator, and replacing carpet with a wood floor, though that last one carries its own catch, covered in the FAQ.

Then there are the retained premises: the parts the freeholder owns or controls, such as the roof, the external walls, the structural walls, the floors and ceilings shared with other flats, and the chimney and flues. Work touching any of these commonly needs consent, and the rules there can be stricter.

So the pivotal question is two-part. Which covenant type does your lease use, and what falls inside your demise, the part of the building your lease grants you, as against the freeholder's retained parts. Only your lease answers that.

The rule that protects you, and its limits

There is a statute that helps you, within limits. Section 19(2) of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1927 sets default rules for leases. For a qualified covenant against improvements, it implies that the freeholder's consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. An improvement, here, means a change that betters the flat from the leaseholder's point of view.

The effect is useful. A qualified covenant, which only says alterations need consent, is treated for improvements as though it said consent cannot be unreasonably withheld. The lease cannot take this protection away.

The freeholder can still require certain things. They can ask for a reasonable sum to cover any damage, or any drop in the value of their interest. They can ask you to pay their reasonable legal and surveyor costs of dealing with the request. But for an improvement under a qualified covenant, they cannot charge a premium, which is a fee just for agreeing.

Now the limits, stated plainly, because they matter. Section 19(2) only helps where two things are both true: the covenant is qualified, and the works are an improvement. It does nothing for an absolute covenant. If your lease bans alterations outright, the freeholder can refuse for any reason, or name their own price. The statute does not reach that far.

What it costs, and how long it takes

The process is fairly standard. You apply to the freeholder, or to the managing agent who runs the building for them, with drawings and a specification. The freeholder's surveyor reviews the plans and may inspect the flat. Terms are agreed. The freeholder's solicitor then drafts the licence, which is a deed, and it is signed before any work begins.

On cost, you usually pay the freeholder's reasonable surveyor and solicitor fees for handling the request. You may also be asked for a damage deposit, held for the duration of the works. The fees must be reasonable, but the exact figures vary by building and change over time, so treat any number you are quoted as specific to your case.

On time, the process commonly takes two to three months, and sometimes longer. The great managed estates of prime central London run their own prescriptive processes and publish their own targets, so the route can be more structured there, not faster by default.

It is worth knowing that an improvement is judged from your point of view, not the freeholder's. This is the long-standing rule from a 1937 case, Lambert v Woolworth. An alteration can count as an improvement to you even if it reduces the value of the freeholder's interest, which is why most things a homeowner wants to do will qualify.

Here is the crux. The licence runs alongside the build, and it can be slower than the build. People start it too late, often after they have lined up an architect and a contractor, sometimes before they have even completed the purchase. Start it as early as the design allows.

What happens if you skip it

Doing work that needed consent, without that consent, is a breach of your lease. The important part is that the breach runs with the lease. If a previous owner did unconsented work, it becomes your problem the moment you buy the flat. The breach does not expire when the flat changes hands.

The freeholder has several options. They can require reinstatement, which means putting the flat back as it was. They can refuse consent after the event. They can claim compensation. As a last resort, they can pursue forfeiture, which means ending the lease.

Forfeiture sounds alarming, so keep it in proportion. For a residential long lease, the freeholder must serve a formal legal notice, and must first get a court or tribunal to find that a breach has happened. Courts can grant relief from forfeiture, letting you keep the lease. Forfeiture of a long lease is slow and rare. It is the extreme outcome, not the usual one.

The usual pain is quieter, and it is the one to take seriously. When you sell, the buyer's solicitor asks for the licence to alter. If it does not exist, the sale stalls or falls through. You then scramble for a retrospective licence or an indemnity, under time pressure. The gap can affect the price, whether a buyer can get a mortgage, and the buildings insurance. The same problem surfaces when you try to extend your lease, because the freeholder's valuer will spot the unauthorised work.

Putting it right, and doing it in order

If the consent was missed, you can often get a retrospective licence, one granted after the work is done. But you are on the back foot. The freeholder can set conditions and a price, or in some cases require the work to be reversed, and is under no duty to agree at all. It is harder and more expensive than getting consent first. It is also exactly the document a buyer's solicitor will demand when it is missing.

The order that works is simple. Confirm your lease's alteration covenant, and whether the works touch the retained parts, before you design around them. Apply for the licence as early as the design allows. And keep it separate in your head from planning permission, building regulations and the Party Wall etc. Act 1996, which governs work affecting a wall shared with a neighbour. A project can need several of these consents, and securing one does not discharge the others.

There is a reason this consent gets missed so often. The licence to alter is the one the construction industry is happy to treat as someone else's job. The architect assumes the solicitor has it. The solicitor assumes the client has briefed it. The builder starts because the programme says Monday. A construction manager who runs a leasehold flat project without checking the licence is in hand before work begins is part of that problem, Myrmex included. It is one example of who carries the risk on a prime London project.

The cheapest version of all this is the one where the paperwork is done before the wall comes down. Read your lease, take advice from a solicitor, and get the freeholder's consent in writing first. This is the general position, not advice on your own lease. If you want to see how we work a project from the first decision, that is the next thing to read.

Licence to alter a leasehold flat: the freeholder consent most renovations forget