IN Brief:
- Planning consent covers 200 council homes on an undeveloped Phase 5 brownfield plot at Battersea Power Station.
- The social-rent homes will be owned and operated by Wandsworth Council, supported by GLA grant funding.
- Construction is expected to start in 2027 and complete in 2029.
Wandsworth Council has secured planning approval for 200 council homes on Phase 5 of the Battersea Power Station masterplan, moving an undeveloped brownfield plot east of the Grade II* listed landmark towards construction from 2027.
The homes form part of the council’s Homes for Wandsworth programme and will be owned and operated by Wandsworth Council, with accommodation offered to local households, including families, at social-rent levels. Completion is targeted for 2029, leaving the partnership with a two-year construction window once the main works begin.
Dowen Farmer Architects has designed the scheme as a multi-layered residential building with communal gardens and a large south-facing roof garden. Vertical detailing and brick latticework are intended to reference the neighbouring power station, while a darker base defines community and active ground-floor uses. The ground level will add family-oriented public space, a tree-lined route, and units capable of supporting local business, leisure, and hospitality uses.
The housing is being brought forward through a partnership between the council and Battersea Power Station, with support from the Greater London Authority. Funding will come through Wandsworth’s Housing Revenue Account and GLA grant support, giving the council direct ownership and long-term responsibility for the homes rather than relying on a private developer to retain and manage them.
The partnership was announced in late 2025, when the undeveloped Phase 5 plot was identified for council housing. Planning approval turns that agreement into a consented scheme, but procurement, detailed design, construction logistics, building-control submissions, utility coordination, and programme integration still have to be completed before permanent works start.
Delivering 200 council homes inside one of London’s most prominent mixed-use regeneration projects creates a different set of interfaces from an isolated residential site. The surrounding masterplan already contains homes, offices, retail, leisure, transport infrastructure, and public realm, so deliveries, temporary works, noise, pedestrian routes, servicing, and construction access have to be coordinated around neighbouring occupiers and other live development activity.
The brownfield location does bring advantages. The Battersea development already benefits from established roads, public realm, and the Zone 1 Northern line extension, reducing some of the off-site enabling burden that would fall on a stand-alone regeneration scheme. It does not remove the need to resolve local utility capacity, fire strategy, servicing, drainage, construction access, and the physical interfaces between Phase 5 and adjacent plots.
Long-term ownership also changes how design decisions should be judged. Wandsworth will carry maintenance, management, energy-performance, and service-cost exposure after handover, so façade specification, communal areas, building services, access systems, landscaping, and roof spaces cannot be assessed only against the capital budget. A cheaper construction solution can become an expensive housing-management problem if it increases maintenance or replacement costs over the building’s operating life.
The approval arrives while the wider Battersea Power Station development continues to evolve. Construction on the final section of Electric Boulevard is due to begin, while the development company has further planning activity across later phases. Phase 5 therefore has to progress within a masterplan whose logistics, interfaces, and development sequence are still changing around it.
London regeneration schemes have often produced long gaps between masterplan promises and the delivery of genuinely affordable homes. Wandsworth’s direct role as owner and operator gives the council greater control over tenure and allocation, but it also places delivery risk, capital discipline, and long-term asset performance firmly on the public-sector side of the partnership.
The council’s ownership model also means handover cannot be treated as the end of the project. Asset information, warranties, building-services records, fire-safety documentation, and maintenance requirements will feed directly into the housing-management operation. The quality of those records will influence how quickly defects are resolved and how efficiently the council can manage the building once residents move in.
Before construction starts, the partnership still has to translate the planning design into a coordinated procurement package. That work will need to align architectural intent with structure, façade, MEP, access, landscape, and the operational requirements of a council landlord, while keeping the package buildable within a busy masterplan.
The next milestone is to convert the planning consent into a construction-ready package for the intended 2027 start. With completion targeted for 2029, procurement and detailed design will have to advance quickly enough to keep the council housing aligned with the surrounding Battersea programme rather than leaving another consented brownfield plot waiting for a later development cycle.
