Paddington has become a destination neighbourhood that everyone will want to visit. The waterside regeneration project is well on the way towards achieving its ambitious vision for a new Paddington. Robin Partington Architects is the firm behind the masterplan for Merchant Square. 
 
In the round, Paddington Waterside involves 13 different development schemes across 80 acres, with a development period, which began in 1998 and stretching over 20 years. The developments offer a range of uses including residential, commercial, retail, hotel, and leisure. For the past decade Affordable Housing Solutions has provided strategic advice together with detailed project specific affordable housing input.  Our brief includes affordable housing policy input, economic appraisals, mix and location, advice, as well as design specification input.
 
In relation to the latest phase of development at Merchant Square, our successful negotiate and subsequent agreement of the proposed affordable housing content, paved the way to an expeditious construction start. Our expertise in the robust formulation of a compelling financial vitality based case was instrumental to the outcome. 

 

The fulfilment of our brief with European Land was facilitated by our existing positive dialogue with the City Council’s Housing Development Team.

This offered the opportunity to refine the City Council’s broader Housing Needs Survey data to reflect a site specific affordable housing unit size and tenure mix. This process provided the additional advantage of delivering measurable targets for the design team.

 

Furthermore, we employed the Financial Viability Assessment prepared by ourselves to successfully negotiate the proposed affordable housing solution, to deliver an expeditious construction start for our proposals.