Breaking new ground

‘Fantastic’ is not generally a word you’d associate with standing around on a muddy building site in late February, but it was a word much in use at the ground breaking for a £29 million development in Islington yesterday.

The reason for the enthusiasm was not solely down to the nature of the scheme – although it does have some unusual features – but more to do with the fact that it is happening at all.

‘At this point being able to start a project is absolutely fantastic,’ noted Elliot Lipton, managing director of developer First Base. Homes and Communities Agency London director David Lunts said support for the scheme had also been ‘fantastic’. ‘It’s a fantastic location,’ he added.

So what has got the 119-unit Highbury Gardens development off the ground, and why is everybody so pleased about it?

Best laid plans

First Base applied for planning consent for the site in 2007, but Mr Lipton says it has been working with its partners to ‘tweak’ the scheme slightly in recent months.

Southern Housing Group, which has agreed to buy 52 homes on the site, took a bigger stake in the project than originally planned, and the HCA put in an extra £3 million of Kickstart funding last year, on top of £4.83 million in grant that went to Southern.

The land for the scheme has also been put forward by the HCA, which bought the site to reduce the risk for the developer. Of the 119 homes, 62 will be sold to key workers on a shared equity basis. When they eventually sell their homes, the revenue raised on the percentage of the home they do not own will go back to the HCA.

Mr Lunts says the agency is likely to benefit from the arrangement, as prices will still be relatively low when the homes are sold, so the value of the HCA’s stake should rise.

Design

It is not just the financing arrangements that make Highbury Gardens stand out. New affordable housing in the capital tends to feature bright colours and ultra-modern designs, but here architect Porphyrious Associates has gone for a classical look based on the traditional concept of a London mansion block.

The development sits between two conservation areas, and mirrors the surrounding blocks by incorporating retail space on the street-facing ground floor, below apartments.

‘The key thing for us is that we design buildings that are appropriate for the area,’ says Mr Lipton. ‘In some places that means we do very modern, in other places more classical. All of them represent high quality design and what our future residents want.’

The retail and commercial space will be let to local businesses, and First Base is also helping the community through a section 106 obligation to ensure the construction of the homes creates local employment.

The building work is being carried out by Mansell, which is using modular bathrooms and some off-site construction in a drive to keep costs down and standards up. To meet the required level three of the Code for Sustainable Homes the units will use hot water heated through solar panels, and whole house ventilation.

Whether Highbury Gardens does turn out to be as fantastic as everyone hopes will still partly be down to the economic climate, but the project partners have done what they can to minimise the risk.

Mr Lunts is optimistic that it will be a success. ‘It doesn’t depend on a lot of market sale,’ he says. ‘We think it is a really nice scheme.’

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