PROJECT REPORT: MAJOR DEVELOPMENTS 29
© Paul Riddle
Council, which was progressing its own share of award-winning developments, but in the words of design lead at Be First, Jacob Willson, the new company was formed to “scale up delivery,” and focus on important regeneration projects in the Borough. It now has one of the most ambitious local authority housing programmes in the country, with close to 500 units per year, and a target of 50,000 new homes by 2037.
As well as the public sector however, Willson says Be First are “active” in the private land market as well, with land agents and commercial agents seeking out opportunities.
e irst benefits fro also rovidin the statutory planning function on its projects, giving it something of a ‘poacher and gamekeeper’ role as Wilson readily accepts. “It’s not just a regen delivery team – we also brought in the planning team, similar to the LLDC (Olympic Park legacy) planning model.”
The stigma attached to the estate previously contributed to it being a “fairly transient” population, says Willson, with many residents moving out much sooner than in other developments, normally into the huge Becontree Estate. He explains that the problems inherent to the original development, with its “typical low-rise blocks peppered with high rise” meant the
answer was to demolish it and rebuild a sustainable community in phases which would attract and retain residents. Ben Addison, assistant delivery director was the project lead for Be First, and he explains that Gascoigne West Phase 1 was previously “low-rise three-storey blocks containin ats e adds that as some of the homeowners were leaseholders from Right to Buy, “there were some buybacks,” and with the new scheme having fewer such landlords, there’s a hope that transient tenants will be further reduced.
CLIENT GOALS
Addison explains how the overall project emerged from “social inclusion programmes” in the early 1990s, which then led the council to “recommend a holistic regeneration of the area, and that was always involving full demolition, in the case of Phase 1.” There are different approaches for different phases, and not all involve full demolition.
Architects Fraser Brown Mackenna were appointed to complete an outline masterplan for Gascoigne West in 2018, and Be First submitted an outline application in December 2018 which covered all three phases, with a maximum of 850 homes. White Arkitekter were subsequently commissioned by Be First in
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Be First “worked really hard with the politicians and residents to think about how we make tenure blind developments,” says Jacob Willson, design lead
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