IN Brief:
- Kori Construction has secured a £18.75m contract for Birchgrove’s Chiswick development.
- The former police station will be replaced by 50 private-rental extra-care homes.
- Community space and a dedicated police facility will be incorporated at ground-floor level.
Kori Construction is preparing to begin a £18.75m contract to replace Chiswick’s former police station with a 50-home extra-care retirement development for Birchgrove.
Kori Construction is expected to start work in September, with completion planned by the end of 2028. The contract is the contractor’s fourth development for Birchgrove and adds another London project to its later-living portfolio.
The existing police station at 205–211 Chiswick High Road will be demolished and replaced by two buildings ranging from one to six storeys. The development will provide 50 private-rental extra-care apartments, shared resident facilities, landscaping, cycle parking, and ancillary accommodation.
A ground-floor room will be available for local organisations, charities, and individuals to hire. A separate dedicated police facility will restore a policing presence on the site following the closure of the former station.
Planning permission was approved subject to conditions and completion of Section 106 and Section 278 agreements. Kori’s appointment moves the project from consent and development planning towards physical delivery several years after the original police use ended.
Later-living requirements shape the build
Extra-care housing differs from a conventional apartment scheme because the building must support independent living while allowing assistance to increase as residents’ needs change. Accessibility, circulation, lighting, acoustics, wayfinding, emergency systems, and staff access therefore carry greater operational significance.
The apartments are intended for private rental rather than individual sale, keeping the development under a single long-term operator. Birchgrove will retain a direct interest in energy use, durability, maintenance access, replacement cycles, and the performance of communal facilities after construction is complete.
The programme begins with demolition on a constrained high-street site. Surveys must confirm the existing structure, service connections, hazardous materials, and relationship with neighbouring property before the building can be dismantled safely.
Deliveries, waste removal, temporary works, dust, noise, and pedestrian protection will have to be managed around shops, homes, buses, cyclists, and local traffic. A small disruption within the site boundary can quickly become a larger problem where construction movements meet a busy urban street.
The replacement buildings rise from one to six storeys, creating several roof levels and structural interfaces rather than one uniform block. The changes in height help respond to surrounding property, but they complicate waterproofing, façade access, drainage, transfer structures, fire compartmentation, and maintenance planning.
The apartments and shared areas will require step-free routes from the street through entrances, circulation spaces, homes, gardens, and service areas. Lifts, corridors, doors, kitchens, bathrooms, and thresholds must accommodate residents whose mobility may vary substantially during their occupation.
Those requirements need to be embedded within the main construction information rather than treated as adaptations after standard residential layouts have been fixed. Small dimensional errors can have a disproportionate effect where turning circles, transfer space, handrails, or assisted access are involved.
Building-services resilience will also be important. Heating, hot water, ventilation, lighting, communications, access control, fire detection, and emergency systems must support both domestic life and care operations, leaving limited tolerance for inaccessible plant or poorly coordinated distribution.
The community room and police facility add further complexity at ground-floor level. Public visitors, residents, staff, contractors, and police users will need separate or controlled access routes without undermining privacy, safety, or the residential character of the development.
Those uses also affect fire strategy, acoustic separation, servicing, and operating hours. A community space used for meetings may have a different occupancy pattern from a residents’ lounge, while the police facility requires a clear operational boundary from the remainder of the building.
Landscaping is intended to provide amenity space, but the external design must also accommodate refuse collection, cycle parking, fire access, deliveries, drainage, and maintenance. On a compact site, these functional requirements can gradually erode garden space unless they are resolved together.
The £18.75m value and programme indicate a substantial redevelopment rather than a modest conversion. Although the project is commonly described through the former police use, the approved work involves demolition and purpose-designed replacement buildings.
The long-term rental model means Birchgrove will remain exposed to the quality of the completed asset. Defects, inefficient services, inflexible layouts, and difficult maintenance access would affect operating cost and resident experience rather than being dispersed among individual leaseholders.
The programme runs until the end of 2028, allowing a little over two years for demolition, foundations, structure, envelope, services, fit-out, external works, and commissioning. That timetable must also accommodate the testing and safety requirements associated with housing intended for older residents.
Starting work will turn a long-running redevelopment proposal into a live construction project. Its success will depend on whether the replacement buildings can support residents, care operations, public community use, and a renewed police presence without allowing one function to compromise another.
