November Planning News

Nick Baylis, the HWA Planning Officer, writes:

This month the main Town Planning news relates to our waterfront along the Thames. The existing office building to the north of the railway line and off the Lower Teddington Road, Burgoine Quay, has been granted a consent for a three-storey side extension. This will have the effect of closing off the pedestrian gap alongside the bridge. The building will have a wharf side feel and, with balconies along the full width of the building, facing the river, reminiscent of a Docklands apartment building.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the bridge an application for eight ‘residential units’ at 1D Becketts Place was refused. Currently there is a two-storey office pavilion on the site, between two apartment buildings, with a meeting room on the Ground Floor. Reasons given for the refusal include that the building would create overdevelopment of the area, failing to relate or harmonise to the residential area, and harmful to the amenity of the neighbouring dwellings. Loss of employment floorspace was also given as a reason for refusal. Whilst the narrow frontage of the proposed building, facing the river, is similar in height to its neighbours its mass behind (and towards the Lower Teddington Road) seemed deep and bulky to us.