London Borough of Tower Hamlets Development Awarded Planning Permission
Apartments, Portree Street, London, E14
The Portree Street Development In East London Has Been Awarded Planning Consent From The London Borough Of Tower Hamlets This Week.
Proposals designed by Stephen Alderdice Studio for Kisiel Group and Transport for London bring to life a prominent ‘flatiron’ shaped plot at the end of a row of Victorian Terrace houses and will include 10,000 sqft of development and 9 new family apartments.
We were fortunate to have enjoyed good pre-application support from the Borough and from Transport for London and wide public consultation pre-application with neighbours who also were supportive of the development.
The application had to overcome some challenges. In the first instance, although the land was released by Transport for London for the purposes of development, the site was previous designated as a Publicly Accessible Open Space under emerging planning policy. This policy resists the loss of public open space for development. We successfully demonstrated that development of the land would offer greater public benefit than to remain undeveloped.
The land falls within the Flood Plain, and so we designed the building in such a way that the storm surge levels of a 1 in 100 year flood event would not flood the ground floor apartments.
Although the proposed building is 5-storeys tall, it is south of a 2-storey Victorian row of terraces and we had to mitigate an unacceptable loss in Daylight & Sunlight Amenity to neighbouring residences. Using daylight analysis and building modelling, we successfully demonstrated how we could optimise the development height whilst meeting the BRE guidelines.
In order to offer an active frontage and function at the ground floor, in this prominent position, we demonstrated to the Borough that it is appropriate for the development to be designated as Car-Free and therefore avoiding the obligation to offer car parking spaces on site, instead the need is provided through car club and existing on-street car parking.
The site is located beside a busy carriageway that generates noise and air pollution. Our design of the building ensured that we met the local authority’s requirements with regards to Air Quality & Noise, not least through the design of inset balconies that offer sheltered outdoor amenity space for the users of the new building.
The Kisiel Group hope to finalise arrangements with TfL in light of the award of Planning Consent, with a view to commencing construction on this development in Autumn 2020.