Client Beltane Asset Management
Type of project Commercial-led, mixed use development
Gross internal floor area 26,888m²
Architect Squire and Partners
Project manager Capital & Provincial
Quantity surveyor Gardiner & Theobald
Planning consultant Gerald Eve
Structural engineer AKTII
Services engineer and sustainability consultant HDR
Landscape consultant Andy Sturgeon
Transport Caneparo Associates
Façade consultant Thornton Tomasetti
Townscape and built heritage consultant Tavernor Consultancy
Rights of light Point 2 Surveyors
Acoustics and vibration consultant RBA Acoustics
Squire and Partners’ refurb of 1950s Notting Hill tower approved
He said: ‘The scheme creates a new, extremely high-quality, distinctive campus of buildings and public realm that will complete the regeneration of Notting Hill Gate and be a very positive addition for years to come.’
Following the planning permission decision, Henry Squire, partner at Squire and Partners, said the firm was ‘delighted’ by the decision.
Redevelopment of the tower will see the existing workspace upgraded through extension of the floor plate, the addition of two new floors and the introduction of balconies and a roof terrace.
At the time, Skyline campaigner Barbara Weiss described the mayor’s decision to approve the scheme as ‘terribly disappointing’.
Source:Squire & Partners
The London-based practice’s plans to retain, refurbish and extend Newcombe House by three storeys, and introduce two new neighbouring buildings on Kensington Church Street, replaces previous plans to demolish the tower that were approved four years ago.
Squire and Partners was hired by new owners Beltane and Angelo Gordon to ‘completely rethink’ plans for the prime Notting Hill Gate site, including Newcombe House (built 1958-60).
The office-led retrofit scheme near Notting Hill Gate tube station, submitted for planning in 2023, was unanimously approved by Kensington and Chelsea Council.
The project was subsequently called in by the government, but the mayor’s decision was not overturned and the scheme was finally given the green light by then housing secretary Robert Jenrick in 2020.
PROJECT DATA
Squire and Partners said the new tower design design was ‘influenced by the international style of Notting Hill and its distinctive 1950s architecture’ with modernist elements such as the vertical expression, solid western elevation and geometric shapes reinterpreted in a contemporary way.
Drawn up with engineers AKT II, the development will keep the structure of the existing Newcombe House, although the neighbouring, and now empty, Royston Court bedsit block will be demolished.
The previous scheme, designed by the since wound-up Urban Sense Consultant Architects and including the demolition of Newcombe House, was finally approved by the London Mayor in 2018.
Newcombe House has long been earmarked for regeneration but plans by former owner Brockton Capital to build a 17-storey tower spent years in planning limbo and were rejected twice by Kensington and Chelsea Council.
These buildings would be demolished and replaced with a new six-storey building containing shops and additional workspace, and a seven-storey building incorporating affordable housing and a medical centre, designed in collaboration with the NHS.
After winning consent for the project, Brockton sold Newcombe House on to Beltane and Angelo Gordon for a reported £100 million in early 2022.
Alongside the tower, the site also comprises ground-floor shops on Notting Hill Gate and Kensington Church Street and former bedsit accommodation known as Royston Court on the corner of Kensington Church Street and Kensington Place.