Even Taller Towers at Vauxhall
If you travel along the Wandsworth Road towards Vauxhall from Battersea, you cannot but be aware of the vacant site just before you get to the one-way system and the bus station. The site is just over the boundary between Wandsworth and Lambeth, and it has been empty for more than a decade, while the Thames City development across the road has been built up. Now there are proposals for a huge development with the two tallest towers yet for Vauxhall.
The site used to be owned by the developer CLS Holdings, and plans designed by the architects Allies and Morrison were approved by Lambeth Council in 2013. The plans were for a total of nine buildings on the site, including two towers of 50 storeys – slightly lower than the Thames City Towers across the road. But in the 12 years since 2013, nothing has been built. The site was sold by CLS Holdings to the Chinese developer R&F, which then sold it on to Hong Kong rival Far East Consortium for £95.7m in 2022. Cedarstone Capital Partners and Bmor then purchased the site last year with financing from Cheyne Capital. The new owners sacked Allies and Morrison and brought in new architects, Pilbrow and Partners, to design a new scheme, which was submitted to Lambeth Council in October. The scheme would put seven buildings on the site, one of 69 stories, and another of 61: significantly taller than the two tallest Thames City towers, which are 58 and 53 stories. They would thus be the tallest buildings in the Vauxhall cluster.
The whole development is much bigger- denser as well as taller – than the consented scheme designed by Allies and Morrison some15 years ago. It would include 1100 housing units (35% affordable is claimed, but with no guarantee, and depending on large amounts of subsidy from the public purse; over 1100 bed-sit ‘co-living’ spaces; 700 purpose-built student bedrooms; a hotel; and a small amount of office space (the consented proposal had much more). There would be some green space in the middle, but despite what's claimed in the application, there is no real attempt to link that space with the beginning of the linear park on the other side of the road.
The scheme is objectionable on many different grounds, including height and density and overdevelopment of a constrained site, traffic congestion and transport issues, inadequate public and green space, and an over-supply of single-bedroom co-living and student accommodation.
We are submitting an objection to the proposal. And since Wandsworth Council is a statutory consultee for the planning application, we are also making representations to them about our concerns.