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A social housing borough, and the repair chain that comes with it

Census 2021 counted 122,393 households in Lewisham. 29.2% rent socially, tenth highest in London. What is distinctive is the split within that figure: 13.1% rent from the council and 16.1% from a housing association or other social landlord. That second share is the fourth highest of the thirty-three London local authorities, behind only Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Kensington and Chelsea, and well above the London figure of 11.0%.

Lewisham publishes that its own stock stood at 13,523 dwellings at its April 2024 stock condition survey, that 26% of that stock did not meet the Decent Homes Standard at the time of the survey, and that the figure had improved to 17.4% by April 2025. The survey accessed 83% of properties and 100% of blocks.

For an emergency plumbing firm the practical consequence is a question of standing. In an owner-occupied house the person on the phone can say yes. In a council or housing association property they usually cannot, because the landlord holds a repairs contract and the tenant is not the customer. What a tenant can do is get the property made safe and get the fault documented. That is exactly what we do: attend, isolate, contain, and produce a written record of the fault, the containment and what remains outstanding, which is a far more effective thing to put in front of a landlord than a phone call.

Ownership is thin here by London standards. Only 41.9% of Lewisham households own, and only 15.4% own outright, twenty-fifth of thirty-three. 27.2% rent privately, twenty-fourth in London, which is a lower private rented share than Ealing, Haringey or Wandsworth. The result is a borough where a large majority of homes have a landlord of some kind, and where paperwork is worth more than opinions.

Terraces, conversions and a lot of flats, all within a couple of streets of each other

39.1% of Lewisham homes are in a purpose-built block, 26.2% are terraced and 16.3% are part of a converted or shared house, ninth highest in London. Only 13.0% are semi-detached and 3.0% are detached. On bedrooms, 34.2% have two and only 13.8% have four or more, twenty-third of thirty-three.

That mix concentrates two particular kinds of fault. Victorian and Edwardian terraces converted into two or three flats produce shared soil stacks with branch connections added wherever they fitted, waste runs re-routed during conversion, and a cold feed that may serve more than one unit. The ground floor flat takes a shared stack blockage first and is usually not the flat that caused it.

The purpose-built blocks produce the other pattern: communal risers, valves that will not close, and water that tracks down through several floors before anybody reports it. On a riser leak the useful first move is isolation at the riser rather than in the flat, and knowing that before arriving saves the ceiling. The Census reports both of these at borough level only, so which of the two you are dealing with is a question about your building rather than your postcode.

On heating, 71.5% of Lewisham households run on mains gas only, seventeenth in London, 11.8% on electricity only and 2.7% on a district or communal heat network only. Lewisham states that 'All communal heating systems are serviced by BSW' and that it has 'a legal duty to make sure that all our appliances are checked every year by properly qualified gas engineers'. So a radiator problem in a council flat here is often not the occupant's boiler at all, because there is no boiler, and the servicing contract sits with somebody else.

We should be precise about one thing, because it gets overstated. Lewisham has published a feasibility study for a North Lewisham heat network taking heat from the SELCHP energy from waste plant towards Goldsmiths, appointing WSP to study 'the most effective route between SELCHP and Goldsmith's College'. That is a feasibility study, not an operating network, and we are not going to describe it as live.

Selective licensing across almost the whole borough since July 2024

Lewisham runs one of the broader licensing regimes in south east London and it has been running long enough that landlords have no excuse for missing it.

Selective licensing came into force on 1 July 2024 and runs to 1 July 2029. The council's own framing when it launched was that 'From 1 July 2024, most privately rented properties in Lewisham will need a property licence' and that 'The new scheme will cover an additional 20,000 properties in the borough'. Coverage is very close to borough-wide. The council explains the gaps by saying that 'Selective licensing is only introduced in areas where the Council can provide evidence that it's necessary, hence its absence in specific wards like Telegraph Hill and parts of Blackheath'.

We are deliberately not publishing a ward list. The statutory designation notice lists its wards on pre-May-2022 boundaries and the council's public-facing pages describe the coverage on the current boundaries. Those two descriptions are reconcilable but they are not the same list, and a plumbing firm printing a ward list that does not match the council's map would be doing landlords a disservice. Check your own address on the council's page.

Additional HMO licensing sits alongside it, borough-wide, in force since April 2022, catching HMOs of three or four people in two or more households that the national mandatory scheme does not reach. On Section 257, Lewisham is unusually clear: 'We are not licensing Section 257 HMO buildings under the additional licensing scheme - individual rented flats within such a building would need a selective licence assuming they are occupied by a single household'. That is the cleanest statement of the Section 257 position published by any of the boroughs on this page.

Fees are modest by London standards. Lewisham states that 'The basic fee for a selective licence is £640, divided into two parts: £160 upon application and £480 upon granting'. HMO fees are charged per lettable unit at £250 on application and £250 on grant, with reductions for early applications, accredited landlords and eligible charities.

On penalties, Lewisham's own pages are currently inconsistent, showing both £40,000 and £30,000 on the same page and £30,000 elsewhere. Rather than pick one, we point at the statute: section 249A(4) of the Housing Act 2004 as in force says a financial penalty 'must not be more than £40,000', raised from £30,000 on 1 May 2026. That is the figure with the clearest provenance.

Article 4 borough-wide, 368 listed entries and a conservation map nobody has counted

Lewisham withdrew permitted development rights for small HMO conversion in two stages. The council states that 'The first direction covers Lewisham's Southern Wards (old ward boundaries) and has been in force since 7 March 2020' and that 'The second direction covers the remainder of the borough and came into force on 19 January 2024'. Between them they cover the whole borough, so converting a family house to a small shared house needs planning permission anywhere in Lewisham and has done since January 2024.

On heritage, the council states that 'Lewisham has around 368 nationally-listed building entries, most of which are Grade II', that '38 listed buildings in the borough are Grade II* and two are Grade I', naming Boone's Chapel on Lee High Road and St Paul's Church in Deptford as the Grade I pair. Its conservation area pages name roughly twenty-eight areas, including Blackheath, Brockley, Brookmill Road, Culverley Green, Deptford Creekside, Deptford High Street and St Paul's, Forest Hill, Hatcham, Ladywell, Lee Manor, Lewisham Park, St John's, Sydenham Hill, Sydenham Park and Telegraph Hill, but publishes no total. We say around twenty-eight rather than asserting a count the council itself does not give.

The plumbing consequence bites hardest in Blackheath, Brockley, Telegraph Hill and Lee Manor, where the housing is older and the elevations are visible from the street. A replacement soil or vent pipe in a new position, a boiler flue on a front elevation, an external condensate run or rainwater goods in a material that does not match are consent questions there, not free choices.

The approach is the same as everywhere we work in protected fabric, and it is worth stating plainly because people assume the opposite. Emergency work to stop water never waits for consent, and we use reversible methods so it does not have to. The consent question belongs to the permanent specification, and it gets raised before you commit rather than after somebody complains.