Alice Hawkins of Turley shares her viewpoint from our latest report 'Housing Londoners: Innovation in Delivery and Design'.

Housing delivery isn’t just about numbers, but ensuring that housing meets high quality design to provide places that people can not only live, but flourish and thrive. Despite best efforts, this can often be difficult to achieve on highly constrained brownfield sites (of which there are many in London), where provision of such elements as amenity space, dual aspect windows, multiple cores etc., in line with the regulatory and planning guidance, are all competing for space.

 

It is important to note that London, as a diverse city, has a need for accommodation to serve a range of Londoners beyond just traditional residential C3 typologies. To my mind, there is an opportunity to marry those two challenges to help deliver high-quality accommodation that reflects need, by thinking more creatively about how sites that are less suitable for traditional housing can meet other accommodation demands.

 

For example, student accommodation. Contrary to the view that it is cropping up everywhere, the numbers tell a story of chronic under-provision and a real demand and supply issue for purpose-built student accommodation (PBSA). Despite the pandemic, data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA)[1] shows that, in 2021/22, there were over 374,000 full-time students in London. A number that is only forecast to grow[2], and already outstrips the GLA forecasts from 2018 that underpin the London Plan, which projected that student numbers would reach 350,000 by 2041/42[3]. Combine that with only 97,000 PBSA beds available in London in 2021/22 and the problem starts to overspill into other parts of the housing market. 

 

A recent report by Business LDN[4] shows that the occupancy of Build-to-Rent schemes in the capital is made up of around 20 per cent students (compared to only 9 per cent in the private rented sector covering HMOs), suggesting that one key factor in this is the lack of PBSA to meet the needs. 

 

By thinking creatively about how to best use land, and in particular constrained brownfield sites, to provide alternative forms of accommodation such as PBSA, serves to optimise land that otherwise would not deliver high quality conventional housing standards. Alongside this, it helps meet the growing demand for student beds and can also alleviate pressures on the existing housing stock and supply.

 

The Rockingham Street PBSA scheme, which recently received resolution to grant at planning committee in Southwark in April 2023, is a great example of a creative solution for a constrained brownfield site that would not work well for traditional residential provision. 

 

An awkward triangle of land, sandwiched between the intersection of two streets and a railway viaduct, the site had remained vacant since previous commercial uses ceased in 2015. Although both commercial and housing proposals had previously been considered for the site, it was clear that the proximity to the railway land and constrained floorplate and shape of the site would not be able to deliver the high quality housing that we, as an industry, aspire to (or perhaps even the minimum requirements!). As such, the site had lain vacant and behind hoarding for the best part of a decade, contributing neither towards housing delivery nor the streetscape. 

 

The student development represents exceptional design to optimise the site in the context of the constraints, to create high quality accommodation (244 bedspaces including dual aspect rooms) and amenity space, whilst also activating the adjacent railway arches along the Low Line, creating a new pedestrian route. The street level design has been carefully considered to ensure a well-designed and activated public realm despite the constraints of the site including double height glazed frontage, art installations, seating and overspill areas for F&B with associated landscaping. The public realm has also been maximised on the constrained site with a cantilevered approach to allow for larger floorplates to deliver accommodation on the upper floors. 

 

There are many such constrained sites across London and thinking creatively about how these can be used to deliver forms of accommodation to address alternative residential needs, not only provides bedspaces for students and helps to relieve pressure on the housing market, but optimises sites to allow for traditional housing delivery of a high standard to be delivered elsewhere.

 

[1] Higher Education Statistics Agency
[2] HEPI’s 2020 report, Demand to 2035
[3] Student population projections and accommodation need for new London Plan 2017
[4] ‘Who Lives in Build-to-Rent’, Business LDN, May 2023