Church Street
- Location: Westminster
- Client: Westminster City Council
- Date: 2018 - ongoing
At Church Street in Westminster, we are revitalising a rundown neighbourhood, creating 1080 new homes and enhancing a much-loved market with a vibrant mix of local enterprise and retail spaces to attract people and investment to the area.
Our Church Street project aims to build on and enhance the social sustainability of the area by bringing neighbours together in communal spaces, providing new community facilities and creating homes which are equal, safe, and great places for all to live.
Church Street and its surroundings are alive with a complex mix of social and private housing, retail, commercial and civic spaces - including a public library and the busy Church Street market running through the heart of the area.
Our mixed tenure scheme delivers high levels of affordable housing, driven by a long term vision of good place creation. New homes, retail and community spaces stitch sensitively into the urban grain, helping to enhance and celebrate the place that local residents call home.
Proposals have been planned with and for the people of Church Street.
Public consultations were held throughout the design process giving us the opportunity to understand the character of the area from residents' perspectives and create a thoughtful response.
Listening and developing a relationship with the local community allowed us to gain knowledge about where we could make genuine improvements to their neighbourhood and reassure them about changes being made. Such changes take time and we have planned these in a way that ensures the area continues to function well, with incremental improvements taking place throughout the course of the development.
By 2022 the scheme had developed to a point where all residents living in the regeneration areas were able to have their say on the regeneration proposal via a residents’ ballot from November 19 to December 21 2022 to make sure the community supported our plans. The result saw 56% of residents take part in the ballot and 73.1% voted ‘yes’.
The planned development will be overall carbon neutral and this is achieved as far as possible with good fabric and efficient services.
Any shortfall in carbon neutrality will be offset by Westminster City Council and applied to environmental improvements implemented as locally as possible.
We have chosen this approach as we believe the benefits of tackling the climate crisis should start at home and should improve the quality of life of local residents
The proposal is designed around a circular economy by using sustainably sourced materials, which are largely re-usable or re-cyclable thereby creating minimal construction waste.