Empress State Building (+Earls Court 2)
[photo: Wikipedia]

Hammersmith has several tall buildings, the latest being 181 Talgarth road, but perhaps the most iconic is 1961’s Empress State (31 Storeys) next to Earls Court. There are more in the pipeline, particularly on our borders. Six years ago, we wrote about the increasing fashion for rather less iconic hi-rises, then referring to what we now call the Ziggurat (35 storeys), Centre House (32 storeys, now largely complete opposite TV Centre on Wood Lane), and the prospect of what was being planned at North Acton, in an “almost continuous string of high-rise developments from NW10 to W12”.

We’re not there – yet – but unknown at the time were the remaining details around Imperial White City and White City Living,  227 Wood Lane, Earls Court – now proposing to build upwards to 42 storeys – and a 29 storey tower, 100 Kensington starting to loom over Tesco at 100 West Cromwell Road next door, and of course along the way, 181 Talgarth road.  Wandsworth recently rejected Terry Farrell’s 29-storey tower on the south side of Battersea Bridge, perhaps suggesting that the recent article by Sir Simon Jenkins has been read London was a city of streets; now it’s a city of towers

Michael Bach of the London Forum recently noted that according to the NLA annual tall buildings report, the pipeline for London’s tall buildings numbers nearly 600 – equivalent to a 20-year supply – based on the completion rate of the last 10 years.

The GLA, London Plan and Tall Buildings Report

Do tall buildings work?

Tall buildings have become the consistent hallmark of Mayoral Opportunity Areas since Ken Livingstone’s days, detailed in our recent Planning System article, more recently favoured by the student accommodation sector (PBSA), notably at North Acton, but also from White City to Nine Elms, and farther afield, remembering that Earls Court is also an opportunity area.  This has led to the recent GLA investigation, and last month’s publication of their Tall Buildings Report. Far from extolling the virtues of tall buildings, important questions are now being asked about the cost (both rent/purchase, and long term, including to the environment), suitability for the people housed in them, particularly families, quality of construction, and of course whether they are actually addressing the ‘housing crisis’.

In the run up to the next London Plan due in 2026-7, the Mayor’s “Towards a New London Plan” document and consultation suggests that his dissatisfaction is that some boroughs haven’t clearly identified tall building locations, and may mandate new rules for tall building clusters, including a minimum height benchmark for small sites, with potentially lower maximum heights near the river. Any clarification would be welcome.  While there’s a welcome proposal to reduce duplication with the NPPF and other policies, and sensitivities around Tall Buildings are recognised, there are a lot of options being tabled here, which might suggest a lack of confidence and/or strategic direction. The public consultation is open until 22 June.

The developer’s argument is often straightforward – it creates more housing on less land, and is more viable. One of the spanners in the works has been the requirement for two staircases post-Grenfell, reducing floor sizes, so putting yet more pressure on heights. There’s also the potential for an insidious side-effect of Mayoral the call-in process, regularly used to approve such designs often against local opposition, and councils (current examples being a 46 storey PBSA tower in Canary Wharf, and a 27 storey PBSA tower at Archway) – the typical step-and-repeat, so called spreadsheet architecture means that developers can easily stretch the tower upwards to meet the demand for a minimum 35% affordable, or until an agreed figure is reached, with almost no design effort at all.  Then they can blame the Mayor.

Last year, the London Forum reported that London is “on course to have the most crowded skyline in Europe“, following a Policy Exchange report that says ‘mania’ for high rise development has damaged UK cities’ and that far from helping the housing crisis,  ‘tall buildings have in fact “made it worse”’. In one memorable week, around half the stories in our Hammersmith Weekly email were about hi-rises, with recent stories around Westfield Living confirming many of the issues. 

Whatever the truth of the claims and counter-claims, in the twenty years of London Plans, coincident with the drive upwards (that was supposed to address the problem), the housing situation has turned from a problem to a “crisis”, and some of the original towers are already being demolished for yet taller ones, before questioning whether they are part of the solution, or part of the problem.

An example – North Acton, 2024

Holiday Inn at 4 Portal Way

Last year we supported affiliate OONF by attending a presentation of the proposed development at 4 Portal Way.  This was held in no less an apt location than… 4 Portal Way, currently a mid-rise Holiday Inn, just twenty years old, on the A40 at Gypsy Corner, pictured. 

This area has now been subsumed into the Old Oak Opportunity Area (OPDC), and almost every building is now up for redevelopment, including the hotel we were sitting in.  Many are for student accommodation (PBSA),  with Imperial mentioned almost exclusively by developers. We understand that OONF have formally objected to another planned for 1 Victoria Road, to replace a building less than 20 years old, disputing the claim that there isn’t really a monoculture of PBSA in the area, which local residents know there is. London Plan policy H15 requires maintenance of a balanced mix of accommodation.

4 Portal Way – now consented

In Hammersmith, why should we care?

When we attended the Portal Way meeting last year, 58 storeys was set to become London’s tallest residential “build-to-rent” tower, which, alongside it’s 44-storey sibling, proposed to provide 670-odd flats – just 12% family-sized (where much of the housing demand actually is), plus a slimmed down 90-bed hotel.  It’s likely to become yet another student accommodation block by any other name, though unlike the ones just up the road – 1 Portal Way – this time not part of Imperial. 

We should care because, while we vigorously defend our part of the river from the kind of outlandish developments we see in Nine Elms and elsewhere, particularly along the southern riverside, just a year later, hi-rise inflation suggests a 70 Storey tower in Vauxhall – proposed by the main protagonist at North Acton – Pilbrow & partners, also responsible for Centre House in Wood Lane. 

For Hammersmith and the northern wards around the Scrubs, 4 Portal Way means another blot on the horizon, alongside the teetering towers that you already see, with uplifting names like “West Point”, and “Icon Tower” but with some thoroughly un-affordable rents, seemingly over £2000pcm for a 1-bedrrom flat half the size of a 2-up/2-down, if Zoolpa has done it’s maths correctly.

2 Queen Caroline Street – proposed PBSA

More locally, Royal London Insurance proposes a 14 storey PBSA tower on the corner of the Broadway, at 2 Queen Caroline St. The (unbuilt) 2019 proposal was 11 storeys, albeit with slightly higher ceilings.

A popular argument behind the recent fad for PBSA (apart from the obvious profitability) is that one ‘real’ home is freed up for the population for every 2.5 student bedrooms built. The GLA has a some recent quite impenetrable guidance on PBSA connected to London Plan policy H15, including this 2.5:1 ratio, based on the ONS’s average number of students in ‘student-only’ houses (2.4). We first heard this quoted in connection with the M&S proposal at 27 King St.

It’s instructive to remember that PBSA isn’t new – Hammersmith has several such developments – including the Royal College of Music’s restrained Prince Consort Village in Goldhawk road. It’s the quantity, building heights and excessive density that mark out the these new proposals.

Nine elms

Stratford (GLA)

White City Living

White City 2021

Earls Court phase 1 proposed

The Portal Way development is to be mostly residential with the aspiration for longer rents, with a hotel half the size of the current one. The developer would not be drawn on why the hotel was half the current size, given how well connected North Acton is, or will be, with HS2, the Elizabeth Line, Central Line and a likely Overground extension “West London Orbital” expected to be in the next London Plan, but profit drives these developments.

These facts highlight the point made in the Policy Exchange report about this type of barefaced speculation, for a long time egged on by the GLA via their opportunity areas, that does little to address actual housing demand, possibly causing actual harm to the supply.  And often in the name or affordable housing with the Mayor’s 35% quota front and central, albeit cloaked in an impenetrable blanket of Discounted Market Rent, Build -to-Rent and London Affordable Rent to name a few.  Only Social Rent is classed as genuinely affordable, and there are none at 4 Portal Way.

At the presentation, we heard an outpouring of double-speak, as if we’d parked our experience and sensibilities at the door, with egregious promises of greening, biodiversity, even birdsong – on the A40!  It can be genuinely offensive to have to politely sit though such presentations, where black is white, up is down, concrete is green, and everyone in the room knows it’s not.

We understand that the penchant for massive building projects may be waning at Imperial, which is hardly surprising, given that recently they appear to have become largely dependent on Chinese students to fund it all.