162 Millbrook Road

162 Millbrook Road is half of a pair: number 160 next door runs as a separate scheme, and the two share a boundary and a party structure. The building had to reach a room count that works commercially while clearing the local authority's HMO standards on room sizes, communal amenity, kitchen provision and refuse storage, which is where schemes like this usually come unstuck.

Eight bedrooms, all en suite, across ground and first floors, from 9 sqm up to 16.95 sqm. Two kitchens serve the house: an 18 sqm kitchen and dining space on the ground floor and a 9 sqm kitchen on the first, so no cluster of rooms is far from a kitchen. The existing conservatory came down and a new beam and block floor went in behind it. Every tea station is a wet area only, with no cooking facilities, which keeps the kitchen count honest against the standards. The external alterations were completed under permitted development rights, so the planning exposure sat where it could be controlled.

Documented to Building Regulations stage. The technical detail is where a large HMO is won or lost: acoustic bar on stud partitions between rooms, separating floors upgraded to Part E, a Category LD2 alarm system, and a fire strategy agreed with the fire consultant rather than assumed.