Site A Design Development

Earlier in May, the Church Street Partnership, a joint venture between Westminster City Council and Mount Anvil, held an exhibition to update residents, local businesses and stakeholders on the progress it has made in developing the design for Site A. Here, we have summarises this progress and explains how residents can find out more.

• The start of The Church Street Partnership
• Design developments to speed up Site A’s delivery and provide more benefits to the community
• What will be happening next

The Church Street Partnership needed to make a small update to the Edgware Road side of Block A2. This was to give the shops and homes on Edgware Road a secondary means of escape at the rear.

Other design developments include: 

• Reducing the time needed for demolition and construction, saving embodied carbon and reducing the number of trucks that need to visit the site.
• Adding more social rent homes and increasing the proportion for families.
• Adding resident facilities. 

These benefits have been achieved by removing the basement under Block A1 and moving what was contained in the basement up into the garden area of the block. The garden is then moved up onto a podium level where it can be accessed by all residents.

There will be a slight alteration to the new library - which will see a small increase in area from the consented scheme. Level access from Church Street is kept along with clear sight lines to the garden. There is a small increase in level from the new library to its garden and this will be designed so that it’s still accessible to everyone. This could include a ramp or lift and we have been talking to the Friends of Church Street Library group and the Council’s Library Service about this. 

We will continue to work with them on the internal layout in the future when we get to the more detailed design stage of the scheme. 

We have developed the designs to deliver more family homes in Site A. We have: 

• Altered the mix of homes which will result in approximately 10 additional social rent family homes (3 bedrooms). 
• Adjusted the total number of homes which will be up to 430 homes 
• Added resident facilities.

There will be some small adjustments to the positions of windows and balconies to align with the adjusted mix of homes. 

The necessary approvals will be sought shortly and we look forward to any comments that you may have before we make those submissions. Demolition is anticipated to start in the summer, and we will be back in touch to give you more details on how the demolition will be carried out. This timeline is based on our current programme and may change. We will publish an updated timeline at our next event.