Blackpool Road in Peckham has been submitted for planning to the London Borough of Southwark. The scheme will deliver 55 social rent homes, 516 purpose-built student accommodation beds, new commercial and community space, and landscaped areas including private outdoor space and a children’s play park.
Our design for planning was developed in close collaboration with Morris & Co. We made best use of the structure where we could, aiming to do more with less while achieving the required grid layout for the scheme. For a development of this type, a reinforced concrete frame is the most logical structural solution, so our responsibility was to identify the lowest carbon concrete spec.
Our initial design focuses on thin slabs, using a raft foundation where possible supplemented by piles where required, and minimising transfer structures to deliver an economical solution, in terms of both cost and carbon.
We delivered a drainage strategy in support of the application. More often than not, when we review designs moving from planning to construction, we find the most conservative discharge rates were specified just to get the green light. This is far from ideal: it passes the cost of an oversized attenuation tank onto clients and adds unnecessary carbon. Our approach, as adopted here, is to make use of the provisions within national and local guidance for previously developed sites, quantify what’s proportionate, and present a robust case for applying a relaxation factor to the surface water discharge rate restriction. This results in a strategy requiring less storage than the default approach, while still achieving an approximate 88% reduction in the site’s peak discharge to the local network.
Taking this into the next phase, we’ll verify our structural and civil proposals through more detailed calculations, reports, and BIM modelling.
Great collaboration, in-depth policy knowledge and application, and a genuine desire to deliver the best solution form part of our every day. If those are attributes you want in your team, get in touch – we’d love to hear from you.