Building apartments above public buildings including hospitals, schools, and libraries, could provide room for 630,000 new homes in London, according to a report, Building Our Way Out of a Crisis, published by engineering services consulting specialist, WSP.
(WSP’s research allows for 100 m² per apartment and uses a mixed height overbuild development strategy, with a combination of 6 and 12 storeys).
The report claims that there is the potential to provide all the 488,000 home that the Greater London Authority says are needed in the next decade, and to simultaneously provide upgraded public facilities for Londoners “by capitalising on the ‘air space’ directly above the sites”.
Under the proposed arrangement, the private sector would refurbish or fully rebuild the hospital, library, or school, ‘paid for by adding several floors of apartments above the new facility that could be rented or sold’. WSP adds that a (Comres) survey of 1,000 Londoners in September 2014 found that 57% believed public facilities were ‘in need of regeneration’, while 61% thought building homes above public facilities was ‘a good idea’.
Director, Bill Price, said: “This isn’t about replacing schools and hospitals with apartment blocks, it’s about using the existing land more effectively with the added bonus that you can regenerate community facilities at the same time. It makes so much sense; these sites by their very nature are ideally located for new homes, close to transport and amenities. So why isn’t it being done already?
“The problem isn’t building them – the engineering design needed is far less challenging than what we did on the Shard. What we realised is that the challenge is more about the perceived issues of people living above places like hospitals because it’s not the ‘done thing’ in the UK. But it’s being done elsewhere.”
WSP’s survey found that 63% said they would happily live above a library – more than those who would live above other flats (59%), while 23% would be willing to live above a school or hospital.
Jonathan Seager, director of Housing Policy at business group, London First, backed the report, saying ‘novel solutions’ were needed for the capital’s housing crisis. He said: “We are building less than half the homes we need in London, and we will have to embrace bold new ideas like using ‘air space’ above sites if are going to turn this situation around. London is sleepwalking into big social and economic problems; our research shows large numbers of people are struggling to live and work in the capital, with three quarter of businesses warning that the housing shortage is a significant risk to the city’s economic growth.”
In the report, WSP examines ‘the real-life example’ of the St Thomas’ Hospital estate in Lambeth, which (according to the Lambeth Core Strategy Plan 2011) is earmarked for redevelopment The study found that if the local council partnered with a private developer to deliver 12 storeys of housing above the new facilities it could provide 4,150 homes - half of Lambeth’s 2021 target.
In the UK, WSP’s 2700 staff consultancy services to all aspects of the built and natural environment working with governments, planners, developers, and architects. Among the firm’s many high profile UK projects have been the Shard, Crossrail, the New South Glasgow Hospital, the Bullring shopping centre in Birmingham, and the re-development of London Bridge station.
