IN Brief:
- The Wansbeck Road scheme will provide 280 co-living studios and 44 affordable homes.
- Two buildings of seven and 10 storeys will complete the Neptune Wharf masterplan.
- The car-free design includes sustainable drainage, rooftop PV, and a BREEAM Excellent target.
McLaren Living has secured planning approval for a co-living and affordable housing development at Wansbeck Road, Fish Island, in Hackney Wick. The scheme will deliver 280 co-living studios and 44 affordable homes across two buildings rising to 10 and seven storeys.
The project occupies the final development plot within the Neptune Wharf masterplan at the corner of Wansbeck Road and Monier Road. McLaren Living says the consent completes a key part of the wider Fish Island regeneration programme, adding 324 homes alongside new public realm, shared facilities and community space.
HTA Design has led the architecture. The co-living element will include a library, gym, studio space, cinema room, communal kitchens, dining areas and shared social spaces, while the wider scheme includes a social co-working café and flexible pop-up event space. A landscaped courtyard will sit between the buildings and connect into the surrounding public realm.
The development has been designed as a car-free, cycle-first scheme. Its landscape strategy includes rain gardens, bioswales and permeable paving intended to manage surface water while increasing urban greening, and roof-mounted photovoltaic panels form part of the energy strategy. McLaren Living is targeting BREEAM Excellent for the development.
The planning history shows how the scheme has moved through the consent process during 2026. An earlier screening request described a two-building development of between seven and 10 storeys with approximately 324 homes, and Tower Hamlets determined that a full environmental impact assessment was not required. The main application followed in May for purpose-built shared living accommodation and affordable housing with associated public realm and landscaping works.
The tenure mix places the project in a part of the residential market where planning, management and design requirements differ from conventional apartments. Co-living schemes depend on smaller private units being balanced by extensive communal space, pushing a larger share of the building into shared circulation, amenity and operational areas. The affordable housing block, meanwhile, must operate as a conventional Class C3 residential component alongside a sui generis shared-living use.
The design team reflects that complexity. HTA lists Project Four as principal designer, Churchman Thornhill Finch on landscape, DP9 on planning, Meinhardt on structural and civil engineering, Stace on quantity surveying and cost consultancy, Chord Consult on MEP, Hoare Lea on sustainability, Orion Fire Engineering on fire engineering and RammSanderson on biodiversity and ecology. Transport, daylight, wind, heritage and arboricultural specialists are also involved.
The most demanding delivery issues are likely to sit at the interfaces between residential density, amenity provision, fire strategy and the constrained urban site. Two mid-rise blocks have to accommodate different tenure and operating models while sharing a coherent public-realm and landscape approach. Rain gardens, bioswales, permeable surfaces and retained mature trees also turn drainage and ecology into early coordination issues rather than landscaping details left to the end of the programme.
Fish Island’s industrial character has influenced the architectural treatment. HTA has described a façade concept drawing on the area’s textile heritage, with a more vertical rhythm to the co-living block and a more horizontal composition to the affordable housing building. The distinction is intended to give the two uses separate identities while keeping them visually related within the same development.
The approval arrives as London continues to use a wider range of housing models on constrained brownfield sites. Co-living remains a specialist tenure, and its commercial case depends heavily on occupancy, management and shared amenities, but the Wansbeck Road scheme couples that model with a defined affordable housing component rather than treating the site as a single-tenure block.
McLaren Living’s wider pipeline focuses on build-to-rent, co-living and mixed-use urban regeneration. The immediate next steps at Wansbeck Road will be detailed design, discharge of planning conditions, procurement and mobilisation, with the consent now establishing the development envelope and principal uses.
The project will also complete the last plot in the Neptune Wharf masterplan, giving its construction a wider urban-design role than its 324 homes alone suggest. Procurement and detailed design will have to resolve the interfaces between the two residential models, shared amenity spaces, drainage features and public realm before the site can move efficiently into production.
Once work begins, the challenge will be to translate a planning package built around shared living, affordable housing, sustainable drainage and public realm into a buildable sequence on a tight east London site without diluting the design commitments used to secure consent. The consent establishes the envelope; the next stage is turning that envelope into coordinated construction information.
