A weekly round up of the latest planning and property news from the central London boroughs

Camden 

City of London 

Construction Enquirer reports that developer Sellar Property is in talks with Network Rail for a landmark redevelopment at London’s Liverpool Street Station. The proposed major project is at an early stage of development although an indicative construction cost has been put at £1.5bn. Liverpool Street is the third busiest station in the UK and has significant overcrowding problems which Network Rail Infrastructure is keen to tackle. It wants to improve access and passenger flow at the station to allow for future passenger growth, while freeing Sellar to bring forward 1m sq ft of office, retail and hotel space around the southern and south east entrances. Network Rail and Sellar are now in formal talks with view to entering into a development agreement by 2023.

Construction Enquirer reports that Royal London Asset Management has got the planning green light for a £200m office scheme next to Holborn Viaduct in the City of London. The 36,000 sq m offices designed by PLP Architecture will see the demolition of three buildings with the foundation retained to reduce the scheme’s carbon footprint. City of London planners yesterday backed the scheme which will stand 10 floors tall on Holborn Viaduct and 12 floors on Farringdon Street. It is the eighth major office scheme to gain planning in the City so far this year, underlying growing momentum for a new wave of major building projects post-pandemic. During the three-year construction programme the project will support an average of around 450 jobs annually. The development supports sustainable travel with an additional 499 long-stay and 34 short-stay cycle parking places.

Islington 

Architects Journal reports that Allford Hall Monaghan Morris is working with developer Derwent London on its plans to redevelop the soon-to-be-vacated Moorfields Eye Hospital site. The developer was selected as preferred bidder to buy the freehold of the 1ha City Road Island site, between 162 City Road and 11-43 Bath Street in east London. The move paves the way – and will help pay for – the relocation of Moorfields Eye Hospital from its 120-year-old home on the City fringe to a new purpose-built facility called Oriel, north-west of King’s Cross. The City Road Island site includes 37,000m² of buildings, including Penoyre & Prasad’s 2006 Richard Desmond’s Children’s Eye Centre. Although Derwent London has announced that it intends to submit a planning application in 2022 for its proposed redevelopment, the scope and detail of the proposal remain unknown.

Kensington and Chelsea

Architects Journal reports that Kensington and Chelsea Council has withdrawn its contentious plans for a cluster of new Haworth Tompkins-designed buildings – including a 14-storey tower – next to Ernö Goldfinger’s Trellick Tower. The practice’s scheme for the borough had proposed 112 new rental homes in five new buildings on the Edenham site, which forms part of the Cheltenham Estate in west London. The scheme was opposed by residents from the surrounding estate, arguing that . Their Save Trellick and Edenham Way campaign argued it would have caused serious harm to the setting of Goldfinger’s tower. There was also concern over overshadowing for residents living in the three-storey housing and low-level blocks within the Cheltenham Estate. The council had already revised the scheme in response to feedback, lowering the highest tower from 18 to 14 storeys and the eight-storey block to six, as well as retaining part of a graffiti wall originally set to be removed. The now-withdrawn plans for Edenham included 56 homes for market rent, 51 council homes and five units for intermediate rent and formed part of the council’s 600-unit New Homes Delivery Programme.

Tower Hamlets 

Property Week reports that Brookfield is set to snap up State Street’s headquarters in Canary Wharf for £250m – £50m less than it had reportedly agreed to buy the building for earlier in the year. According to The Times, the Canadian private equity firm has agreed terms to buy the 14-storey building, which is entirely let to State Street until 2028, from M&G at a yield of nearly 6%. The paper reported that Brookfield had originally agreed to buy the building for £300m in March 2020 but the pandemic caused the deal to fall out of bed. The newly agreed price for the asset represents a discount of almost 17%.

Architects Journal reports that the UK’s biggest practice had put forward plans to demolish two buildings on Whitechapel High Street and Commercial Road to make way for 39,500m² of office space. But Tower Hamlets councillors rejected the scheme at a planning committee (14 December), saying they objected to, among other things, the scheme’s height, the demolition of heritage assets, and its daylight and sunlight effects on neighbours. The scheme, backed by South Street Asset Management, would have been built over playground space owned by the next-door Canon Barnet Primary School, while providing the school with a new playground. However, councillors also objected to the loss of educational floorspace.

Wandsworth 

Construction Enquirer reports that residential developer London Square has purchased part of the former Royal Mail delivery office site in Nine Elms, west London to develop a £400m build-to-rent scheme to be operated by Moda Living. London Square, backed by Ares Management, exchanged contracts on the remaining three-acre site for a total for £111m. The final three phases of the Nine Elms Park development site will feature 756 homes across three sites, 186 of which will be for private for sale in one building. Moda will operate the remaining two buildings containing 437 rental apartments in the BTR firm’s first London scheme. The blocks will also have 103 affordable rent homes and 30 affordable BTR homes. The deal comes as London Square also launches its own BTR arm called London Square Living. The rental arm has also lined up five other BTR sites to deliver more than 1,000 homes.

City of Westminster 

Architects Journal reports that Bell Phillips Architects has submitted a hybrid application for 1,121 homes near Edgware Road in central London. Under the plans, a total of 17 housing blocks, containing 400 homes as well as shops, a pub and a library, would be demolished by Westminster City Council and replaced by a major mixed-used development. The new buildings would provide almost three times as many homes as are already on the site, as well as a library, community space, workspace, shops and infrastructure for Church Street market, which trades six days a week. Councillor Heather Acton, Westminster City Council’s cabinet member for communities and regeneration, said: ‘Following public consultations and professional assessments, a decision was made in favour of partial redevelopment for Sites A, B and C, replacing the majority of existing buildings, whilst retaining Kennet House and many of the properties on Edgware Road.

Architects Journal reports that The London School of Economics (LSE) has launched another major competition – this time for a new £120 million academic building. The much-anticipated RIBA-organised competition will select an ‘exciting […] ultimately deliverable, highly sustainable and flexible’ concept for a new zero carbon academic building on the site of 35 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, formerly home to the Royal College of Surgeons. The new 12,540m² building will house the Firoz Lalji Global Hub – featuring conference facilities, teaching spaces and digital labs – a film studio, a 350-person theatre, seminar rooms, break out areas, research accommodation, café and catering facilities, student spaces, and ancillary facilities, including cycle parking. The deadline for applications is 21 January.