TL;DR The latest Lever House proposals are an improvement on the earlier version in one important respect, with the second building substantially reduced in height. But the main tower remains part 16 and part 18 storeys, containing 255 co-living rooms, while the number of social-rented homes has fallen from 48 to just 27. The Kingston Society believes the application still represents too much development on a highly sensitive site. Its height, density, effect on Kingston’s skyline and heritage, loss of conventional housing, questionable public benefits and unresolved design issues have not been adequately justified. Better than the previous proposal is not the same thing as good enough for Kingston.

Our Objection: The application proposes an eight-storey Social Rent block and a part 16 and part 18-storey co-living tower containing around 255 units. The 27 Social Rent homes are welcomed, but the proposal is materially different from the 2021 permission and has not justified its greater height, mass, intensity or impacts. It should be refused, or deferred pending further evidence and scrutiny.

The core objections concern excessive height and massing, unresolved design-panel criticism, heritage and townscape harm, insufficient justification for demolition, overstated public benefits, weaknesses in the affordable-housing case, and incomplete evidence on neighbouring amenity, management and fire safety.

1. New proposal abandons early scheme: The 2021 permission was for a single building of up to 16 storeys and 115 conventional homes. This is a different two-building, co-living-led scheme and must be assessed afresh. The earlier permission is relevant, but does not justify a taller and more intensive proposal.

2. Unjustified height, mass, orientation and skyline impact: The tower is significantly taller than the 2021 consent and above the range indicated in the Council’s emerging heights evidence. Its orientation and long eastern elevation would increase its prominence and impact on the Guildhall, skyline and lower-rise Fairfield and Knights Park area.

3. Placemaking Panel concerns remain unresolved: The Kingston Placemaking Panel said there was “too much Gross Internal Area”, could not support the proposed height and asked for the co-living block to be reduced. It also criticised the long, slab-like eastern elevation. The current scheme has not returned for a further independent review.

4. Heritage, conservation areas and verified views: The site affects the setting of the Guildhall, the historic town centre and nearby conservation areas. A taller, differently orientated scheme requires fresh and rigorous heritage and visual assessment. The previous permission cannot be treated as blanket acceptance of tall development on the site.

5. Demolition, retention, retrofit and carbon alternatives: The application has not convincingly shown why the existing reinforced-concrete building must be demolished rather than retained, adapted or partially reused. Given the embodied carbon involved, a transparent comparison of realistic alternatives is required.

6. Affordable housing, housing and public benefits: The 27 Social Rent homes are welcome, but the claimed 35 per cent affordable-housing equivalence appears to rely on figures from an earlier scheme and should not be accepted without correction. The 255 co-living rooms should also not simply be presented as equivalent to 255 conventional homes.

6A. Claimed public realm benefit is materially overstated: The main pedestrian route remains around the site, while much of the internal space is access, servicing or private amenity. The proposed Hogsmill route is limited and indirect. The application has not demonstrated a substantial new area of genuinely public open space.

7. Many important questions are unanswered: Important questions remain over daylight, shadowing, overlooking, noise, wind and light spill. The Level 16 communal kitchen and high-level amenity spaces also raise practical and neighbour-impact concerns. The Management Plan contains apparent template material and the fire strategy was prepared before fire-safety consultation had taken place.

8. Information required before determination: If permission is not refused, the Council should require further evidence on retention and retrofit, heritage and views, affordable housing, neighbouring amenity, co-living management, fire safety and genuinely public space, together with a further Placemaking Panel review and proper public consultation.

Conclusion: This is a taller, more intensive and fundamentally different proposal from the 2021 consent. Its scale, heritage impact, housing model and claimed public benefits have not been adequately justified. The application should be refused, or at minimum deferred until the outstanding evidence has been provided and properly scrutinised.

The formal planning application for the redevelopment of Lever House, 3 St James’s Road, has now been submitted by Cube Real Estate. Application 26/01505/FUL seeks permission to demolish the existing building and replace it with two new buildings. The larger would be part 16 and part 18 storeys and contain approximately 255 co-living studios together with communal facilities, co-working and café space. A second building of around eight storeys would contain 27 conventional homes for Social Rent, including some family-sized accommodation. Landscaping, servicing and public-realm works are also proposed.

The Kingston Society welcomes the provision of new Social Rent housing and the reduction in the height of the second building from the scheme we saw earlier in the year. But that improvement needs to be kept in perspective. The main co-living tower remains essentially intact, while the reduction of the smaller building has helped reduce the affordable housing offer from 48 homes in the earlier proposals to 27.

This is not simply a tidied-up version of something already approved. Lever House does have an existing outline permission from 2021, but that was for a single building of up to 16 storeys containing up to 115 conventional homes. The present application proposes two substantial buildings, a different orientation, a tower rising to approximately 70.16 metres AOD and a fundamentally different housing model dominated by 255 co-living rooms. The current proposal must therefore be judged on its own merits. The previous consent is a planning consideration, not a blank cheque for something larger and more intensive.

And it is larger. The maximum parapet height of the proposed tower is about 7.8 metres higher than the maximum parameter of the outline permission. More significantly, Kingston Council’s own emerging Building Heights Study suggests a potential height range of around 45 to 50 metres for this site, subject to detailed view testing and stepping down towards the historic Old Town and Fairfield/Knights Park. The Council’s own subsequent views work found that even a lower version of the proposed building, using its present orientation, would cause greater harm to an important Guildhall view than the previously consented scheme.

That matters because Lever House is not an isolated site on an anonymous skyline. It sits at a sensitive point between the town centre, the Guildhall and the much lower Fairfield and Knights Park neighbourhoods. Kingston may sometimes accommodate tall buildings, and a genuine landmark building could conceivably be appropriate here. But landmark status creates an obligation to be exceptional. Height cannot itself be the landmark quality.

The Design and Access Statement is here, but in order to merge the hundreds of pages into one file it has been compressed and the images are low quality. Other useful files: TIVA report (Townscape and Visual Impact) and Heritage Statement

The Council’s own design reviewers were hardly ambiguous. The Kingston Placemaking Panel considered that there was “too much Gross Internal Area” on the site, could not support the height then proposed and asked for the development brief to be reconsidered to reduce the co-living block “first and foremost”. It also criticised the eastern elevation as a “very long, unbroken flank wall” which risked slab-like dominance in important views. The current scheme has not gone back to the Panel for a further independent review.

This goes to the heart of the Society’s concern. Arguments about brick colour, planting and architectural detail are secondary if the fundamental problem is that too much building has been squeezed onto the site.

The housing numbers also deserve rather more scrutiny than the headline suggests. The scheme offers 27 Social Rent homes, which we welcome. But the applicant also claims an affordable-housing equivalence of 35 per cent. The supporting calculation identified in the application appears to relate not to this scheme, but to an earlier version containing 272 co-living rooms and 48 affordable homes. Unless and until a calculation based on the actual application is produced, that 35 per cent claim should not be relied upon.

Nor should 255 co-living studios simply be spoken of as 255 new homes. They are a particular form of shared accommodation, some with private rooms of around 18 square metres, and the London Plan itself does not count communal accommodation one-for-one with conventional housing for housing-target purposes. There is already consent on this site for up to 115 normal C3 homes. The question therefore is not merely whether the new scheme produces a larger number, but what kind of housing Kingston is being offered in exchange for a much larger building.

The much-advertised public realm is equally difficult to find. The application’s own movement plan shows the principal pedestrian flow continuing around the outside of the site. Internal routes largely perform the ordinary functions of access, servicing, cycling, refuse collection and private amenity. The Hogsmill route is indirect and constrained, while the space between the buildings is not the generous new public riverside space that the phrase “public realm” might suggest. Unless genuinely accessible public space can be clearly identified, measured and secured, landscaping around a private development should not be dressed up as a major compensating public benefit.

Then there are details which become increasingly difficult to dismiss as details. The principal communal kitchen for the co-living residents is proposed at Level 16, raising an obvious question about how “convenient” everyday access will be for residents throughout the building, particularly those with mobility difficulties. The high-level communal areas also introduce potential noise, overlooking and light spill over nearby homes and the affordable block.

The submitted co-living Management Plan appears to contain references to unrelated developments, including “Bath market”, “FSL property”, inconsistent resident numbers and basic information still marked “TBC”. Meanwhile, the submitted Planning Fire Statement records that no fire-safety consultation had taken place when it was prepared. Neither inspires confidence that the operational consequences of accommodating hundreds of people in a building of this scale have yet been fully worked through.

There is also the building we already have. Demolishing an existing reinforced-concrete structure and replacing it with two much larger buildings carries an enormous embodied-carbon consequence. Yet the submitted evidence has not demonstrated through a transparent options appraisal why retention, retrofit, partial retention or a lower-impact redevelopment cannot work. London policy explicitly prioritises reuse and retrofit where practicable. “Brownfield” should not be treated as another way of saying “anything goes”.

And hovering behind all this is the curious parallel story of the existing outline permission. Kingston has recently agreed that the Design Code required under that consent can now be submitted alongside the first Reserved Matters application rather than being approved beforehand. The Society objected to that change. The purpose of a design code is surely to establish the rules before the detailed scheme that is supposed to follow them arrives. Allowing the rulebook and the proposal to appear on the same desk at the same time weakens an important safeguard.

So where does this leave Lever House? There is plainly an opportunity to redevelop this site. The Kingston Society is not arguing for the indefinite preservation of an undistinguished office block, nor against new housing, nor against every tall building. We are asking a rather more fundamental question.

If Kingston is to accept an 18-storey building at one of the entrances to its historic centre, containing an exceptionally intensive form of accommodation and permanently altering important views across the town, what are we receiving in return?

Twenty-seven Social Rent homes are valuable. But the affordable housing has reduced, the claimed public realm appears modest, the co-living model is extremely intensive, the Council’s own design reviewers have questioned the amount of development, and important questions about heritage, demolition, management and residential amenity remain unresolved.

Lever House would also join the growing collection of tall buildings around the perimeter of Kingston’s historic centre. Each can be presented individually as a gateway, an exception or a landmark. Cumulatively they risk creating something quite different: a ring of towers which fundamentally alters Kingston’s silhouette without the town ever having consciously decided that this is what it wants.

The latest proposal may be better than the one we saw before. For a development of this scale and permanence, on this site, better than before is simply not a sufficient planning test.

On the evidence presently before it, the Kingston Society believes the Council should refuse the application, or at the very least require the outstanding evidence and independent design scrutiny before any decision is taken.