Tall & Urban News

Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) has won planning permission for a 796-home development in East London that features a 23-story tower as its highest element.

Members of Newham council’s strategic development committee resolved to approve the scheme, drawn up for developers Mount Anvil and the London International Exhibition Center, at its most recent meeting.

The committee had deferred deciding on the development, earmarked for a 1.03-hectare site adjacent to the ExCeL center, at a meeting in February. Among their concerns were the development’s scale and massing, and the size and type of its affordable housing.

SOM’s two-block scheme will deliver around half of its homes on a hard-standing car park site to the north of the Royal Docks.

Recommending the proposals for approval, Newham planning officers said the scheme had “evolved positively through early engagement” with the council’s Design Review Panel and was supported “subject to further detail of materiality”.

The report added: “Some impacts on neighbor amenity have been identified but, mindful of the site constraints and its urban context, officers are satisfied that the overall impact would not be significant.”

The scheme currently offers 27.1 percent affordable housing when measured by unit, and 35 percent when measured by habitable room.

Because of the scale of the development, Newham’s decision to approve requires the backing of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan.

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