The £400m rebuild: notorious Dolphin Square flats in Pimlico to get new homes, but how many will be affordable?

A £400m revamp of one of London’s most famous blocks of flats includes 200 new homes and underground pool, but its American owners aren’t saying how many units will be affordable.
£400m revamp: a grand new entrance and 200 new homes are envisaged for Thirties-built Dolphin Square in Pimlico
Ruth Bloomfield14 February 2018

Full details of a £400 million reboot of one of London’s largest and most famous blocks of flats are revealed today — but its American owners aren’t saying how many of 200 new homes in the plan will be affordable.

Dolphin Square — which has been home to princesses, politicians, spies and actors over the last 80 years — is to be reconfigured and partly rebuilt to add new townhouses, flats and serviced apartments to its existing cache of 1,106 rental flats and 124 serviced apartments.

A new underground swimming pool and sports facilities, plus extra shops, will also be built at the seven-and-a-half-acre site in Pimlico, and a grand new vaulted entrance has been designed by Eric Parry Architects at Chichester Street.

The plans by Westbrook Partners for Dolphin Square, which was built in the Thirties and has barely been changed since, are now being studied by Westminster council. A decision is expected later this year.

Despite submitting almost 300 planning documents to the council, Westbrook has declined to say exactly how many of the new homes will be affordable and earmarked for people who would otherwise be priced out of the area, other than to promise it will designate the “maximum possible”.

A report by its planning consultants, DP9, argues that Dolphin Square already provides a “different form of accessible low-cost housing,” a reference to the square’s original role providing affordable rented housing to people who worked in the area and wanted to be able to walk to work.

As property values in the area have risen exponentially, however, so have rents at Dolphin Square. Today it is largely unaffordable to people on average London salaries. Rightmove is currently listing about two dozen one-bedroom flats at the red-brick square at rates ranging from £360 per week to £495 per week.

Westminster council’s policies require that about a third of newly built homes in the borough are affordable.

The council has come under heavy fire for allowing the redevelopment of Whiteleys shopping centre in Bayswater without a single low-cost home.

Westminster’s leader, Nickie Aiken, has indicated an end to such practices, promising the council will no longer “buckle” to developers’ requests for minimal affordable housing.

If this issue can be resolved, work will start on Dolphin Square around 2020. The scheme is described by Westbrook as “a vision to secure the future of the site for the next 100 years”.

Since it was built in 1937 Dolphin Square’s flats have attracted a colourful mix of residents, including Soviet spy John Vassall, Oswald Mosley, leader of the hard-Right “blackshirts” — he was arrested there during the Second World War — Princess Anne, former prime minister Harold Wilson, and Carry On actors Sid James and Barbara Windsor.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in