FEBRUARY 2025 UPDATE

The St William team attended a Development Forum on the 13th February 2025, chaired by Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC). The Development forum provided an opportunity for the team to present the latest proposals and respond to questions from the community prior to a planning submission. This was the second Development forum St William have attended.

You can download a copy of the presentation shared at the Developer forum here.

You can read Q&As raised at the session here.

CONSULTATION FEEDBACK – JANUARY 2025

Thank you to everyone who has viewed the updated material, taken part in the consultation and provided feedback so far.

We undertook 7 drop-in consultation events during November and December 2024. The events took place across a range of local venues, including the Kensal Canalside Activity Centre, Dalgarno Trust Community Centre and Kensal Library, gathering written and verbal comments from as many people as possible.

Feedback from the consultation events and local meetings so far has included:

  • Support for using underutilised, brownfield land to provide new homes in the area.
  • Support for the community park proposed.
  • Support and an emphasis on the importance of our 35% affordable housing offer, with people asking for more detail in relation to the tenure and size of the homes, with a preference for large, social rented homes, seeking assurance the homes would be genuinely affordable.
  • The most common concern raised was around transport infrastructure and how the area would cope with the volume of development proposed, including in relation to the constriction period, particularly on the Harrow Road.
  • Some questioned the height of the tower, with concerns about its impact on the cemetery.
  • There were also questions in relation to how the site would be remediated, with a request for further information.
  • From our interactive display at in person events, which asked attendees to prioritise themes and identify what would have the biggest impact locally, improving safety and security emerged as a top priority from the options provided on the board.

If you have any questions or feedback for the team, you can contact us here anytime.

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LANDSCAPE LED DESIGN

As with all St William sites our approach to Kensal Gasworks starts with landscape. A landscape-first approach is the most successful way to open and reconnect places that have been closed to the public for decades.

St William’s aspiration is for Kensal Green Gasworks to become an extension of its surrounding green infrastructure, including Kensal Green Cemetery and the Grand Union Canal. The development maximises the amount of high-quality open space with a new publically accessible open space at its heart reopening an underused and inaccessible part of the local neighbourhood.

The location of the open space celebrates Kensington’s acclaimed garden heritage.

WORKING WITH NEIGHBOURING LANDOWNERS

St William is working closely with Ballymore and Sainsbury’s and have agreed a Collaboration Agreement to ensure a comprehensive redevelopment of the northern parcel of the KCOA can always be realised.

St William’s design team has worked closely with the Ballymore and Sainsbury’s design team led by Faulkner Brown to deliver a coherent masterplan vision.

NEW HOMES

Housing need in RBKC is acute. RBKC failed against the Housing Delivery Test 2023, delivering 63% of the required housing from 2020 to 2023. The development will deliver around 775 much needed new homes on the largest opportunity area in RBKC and the borough’s primary site for housing delivery including 16% affordable homes all as Social Rent. This equates to around 77 new Social Rent homes including 63 of 2 or more bedrooms prioritising Social Rent housing for families.

NEW CONNECTIONS AND PUBLIC REALM

The St William site seamlessly integrates into the wider KCOA masterplan providing significantly improved sustainable transport connections.

The St William and Ballymore Sainsbury’s developments will provide improved bus services and a safer environment for pedestrians and cyclists with a new Ladbroke Grove Canal Way signalised junction and enabling safer and improved routes along the canal towpath.