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Your lease decides what you can do, not the council. Covenants, the extent of your demise, freeholder consent, party structures and building regulations for leasehold flats.

A licence to alter is your freeholder's written consent to change a leasehold property. Which covenant your lease contains decides whether they can refuse and what they can charge.

Flats have no permitted development rights, a freeholder whose consent has no deadline, and party structures overhead. The three consent regimes and how to sequence them.

London renovation costs run around a third above UK figures. The gap is labour, access, waste and borough charges rather than materials. The published figures and the reason.

Permitted development rights removed, party walls on both sides, nowhere to put a skip and borough charges that vary fourfold. What actually differs about renovating in London.

Nationwide's research puts a bedroom plus bathroom at up to 24%, and floor area alone at about 5% per 10%. Why bedroom count matters more than square metres.

Squaring off a hipped roof into a gable. What it involves structurally, why the eaves and setback conditions do not apply, and how it eats the volume allowance.

Usually not: 40 cubic metres on a terrace, 50 elsewhere, and no higher than the ridge. Why the allowance is cumulative, and why rooflights survive in a conservation area.

Stair geometry from Approved Document K, and why the fire trigger is a floor more than 4.5m above ground level rather than the number of storeys.