£1.3 billion mixed-use scheme in London gets the green light

A £1.3 billion riverside housing and secondary school scheme on the banks of the Thames in London has been given the green light after developer Reselton Properties won a 10-year planning battle.

Reselton, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore-listed City Developments Limited, won its planning appeal for the mixed-use scheme in Mortlake, designed by Squire & Partners Architects.

The Planning Inspectorate ruled that a new 1,068-home neighbourhood with a 1,200 pupil secondary school academy, shops, offices and nine acres of green space can be built at the old Stag Brewery site.

The residential part, a mix of one to four-bed units, will have a minimum 7.5% affordable housing, currently 65 homes, “with provision for multiple reviews to claw back additional affordable housing if the viability should improve during the rollout of the scheme”.

Reselton bought the 22-acre site in 2015 and has since presented three different iterations of the scheme. Each was given approval by the planning authority but on each occasion that it was referred to the Greater London Authority (GLA) it was turned down because of its height and scale and an insufficient affordable housing component.  

Local residents had also expressed their concern about increased traffic and levels of affordable housing.

The development, adjacent to the finishing line of the famous annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, is one of the largest schemes in South-West London. It is led by Dartmouth Capital Advisors on behalf of Reselton.

The scheme will bring “a new heart” to Mortlake, said Guy Duckworth, Development Director, Dartmouth, and “apart from the large community school will also provide a cinema, retail, a hotel and office space with an employment potential of over 300 jobs.”

The school sports facilities include two multi-use games areas and an all-weather full-size flood-lit football pitch, all of which are available for community use outside school hours, at weekends and during school holidays.

New social spaces will be created including a new public park on Lower Richmond Road and a package of works to improve pedestrian and cyclist access to the existing routes around the site and level crossing safety use at Mortlake Station.

The scheme works also include a series of road improvements to ease the existing traffic congestion and opens up the site to create a publicly accessible 22-acre brownfield riverside site which has been privately occupied and sealed to public access for centuries.

Richmond Council has welcomed the decision to approve the long-awaited redevelopment of the former Stag Brewery site, describing as “a move that will bring new homes, a secondary school, upgrades to local infrastructure, public realm improvements, green spaces and better access to the River Thames in Mortlake.”

Councillor Gareth Roberts, Leader of Richmond Council, said the decision provides a clear way forward for one of the borough’s most significant brownfield sites that has long remained underutilised. “The redevelopment of the Stag Brewery site presents an opportunity for the whole community,” he said. “While we know this scheme has attracted a mix of views, our priority is to ensure the development delivers real benefits for Mortlake – from new homes and school places to jobs and public spaces.”