British Land believes it has secured London’s most flexible planning consent –

with which it will create a new town centre for the capital at Canada Water that will be enriched by green spaces and populated by the youngest demographic in the city.

Those were some of the key points to emerge from an NLA On Location event held last week at the area’s Printworks building – which has seen almost a million people come through its doors to club nights and other performances – but which will be turned into workspaces following a scheme by Hawkins\Brown.

British Land’s Emma Cariaga kicked off the event, which centres on the developer’s plans for the 53-acre site, which will include up to 3,000 homes, 2.5 million square foot of workspace, and a million square foot of retail, leisure and education. The developer is also hoping to attract world class institutions, with the first already in place, TEDI-London aiming to create the ‘global engineers of tomorrow’. But Cariaga commended the bravery of the council in allowing the developer full flexibility to adapt its plans to the fast-moving built environment landscape, not least to major changes that have affected the retail scene. ‘We think we have secured London’s most flexible planning consent’, she said. ‘It is a new town centre, and in the context of retail and what our high streets are about, I think Canada Water us a unique opportunity for us to imagine what a 21st century town centre is’.

The permission – which allows for as many as 4000 homes or as few as 2000, for example, followed extensive consultation and the council understood the merits of flexibility in the face of changing markets. ‘It was finding a way of demonstrating that they were going to get something of quality’, she added. What unlocked it was the quality and level of detail in the reserved matters application providing confidence in what was coming next, Cariaga believes.  ‘All credit to them’.

Jennifer Newsham of JLL said that research on Canada Water had revealed unique characteristics that may underpin the developer’s decision to invest. ‘Canada Water far outstrips, in terms of that young demographic, most other areas in London’, she said, ‘which is a huge USP’. 

Others at the event including masterplanner Paul Eaton of Allies and Morrison reflected on the area’s natural characteristics – it’s green and blue infrastructure - being a potential draw, not least because the pandemic had served to emphasise the importance of health and wellbeing. ‘It was part of British Land’s brief from the outset that this was a town centre for the whole peninsula’, he said. ‘I think it is London’s nicest Opportunity Area’. In addressing the buildings on the site, the architects had taken a ‘spaces-first approach’, Eaton added.

Others spoke about the emphasis on sustainability which had been adopted throughout, British Land’s Hannah Farahar suggesting that it has been placed at the centre of its philosophy, even extending to an internal green tax it imposes on itself. ‘Sustainability needs to be ingrained in the decision-making process’, said Farahar. ‘Our customers are already starting to demand this, and we only expect it to grow’. AHMM’s Matthew Murphy took the audience through its plans for Printworks Place at Canada Water and the key sustainability moves made throughout. But he made it clear that an important attitudinal shift was required. ‘I’m going to try and start talking budgets rather than targets’, he said of carbon aims. ‘Targets are things you can try and get towards that you might miss. Budgets are a finite limit of things that you can spend’.

Finally, Emma Trueman, Paper Garden Manager at Global Generation showed how creating a garden for locals as part of the wider plans was paying dividends in more ways than one. ‘The garden is about giving them space to voice their opinions, and what they would like to see in the masterplan’, she said.