Croydon Council’s planning committee has approved plans for a major regeneration project on the site formerly occupied by Taberner House, together with the revitalisation of The Queen’s Gardens.
At their meeting last night (18 May), the committee members unanimously gave the go-ahead for the stunning new development which will consist of 514 new homes, of which 179 will be affordable, within four buildings ranging from 13-35 storeys. At ground floor level they will provide 13,000 sq foot of retail and office space while the site will also benefit from a new play area, pavilion café and high-quality public space as The Queen’s Gardens is enhanced with new landscaping. A new east-west route through the gardens will encourage pedestrian travel around the town centre.
The ambitious scheme is a collaboration between HUB and social impact investor Bridges Ventures, the fifth of its kind. They have engaged Stirling Prize winning architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and Grant Associates to design the buildings and landscaping.
Shifa Mustafa, the council’s executive director for place, said: “This is an exciting and ambitious scheme to regenerate a key town centre site, delivering more than 500 much-needed new homes, many of which will be affordable.
“I’m also delighted that The Queen’s Gardens, a valued oasis in our town centre, will be revitalised as a stunning new, high-quality public space with a community café and play area. The developers have engaged with the community from the outset regarding what they would like to see on the site, so local people have really helped shape the plans.
She added: “Taberner House was always an important part of the Croydon panorama and the exceptional design of this development means once again, this will be a site for Croydon to be proud of.”
Steve Sanham, managing director of HUB, said: “There’s a fundamental belief at HUB in the importance not only of delivering sustainable developments, but doing whatever we can to ensure that those developments respect, and talk to the communities that already exist in an area. We took the time to talk to local people, lots of people, we researched the long history of the site, and developed a proposal for Taberner House and The Queen’s Gardens, which we are very happy, has been given the blessing of the council. We’re very much looking forward to putting a spade in the ground.”
The site was home to council headquarters Taberner House from 1967 until 2013, when employees moved into the adjacent Bernard Weatherill House and the site was earmarked for regeneration. Taberner House was demolished in 2015.
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