HTA Design‘s Fish Island co-living scheme for developer McLaren Living has secured planning consent, delivering 280 co-living units and 44 affordable homes on a 0.44-hectare site at Neptune Wharf, Hackney Wick. According to Estates Gazette, the approval was granted by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, with the council’s strategic development committee voting seven in favour, one abstention and one against on 10 September.
What the Wansbeck Road scheme delivers
The development on Wansbeck Road comprises two buildings: a 10-storey co-living block containing 244 units and a seven-storey building holding 44 affordable homes. For planning purposes, the co-living block equates to 156 traditional residential units, contributing to the council’s housing targets, according to the planning report. Hard and soft landscaping improvements are also included across the site.
The affordable housing offer represents 40 per cent of habitable rooms, with all 44 homes delivered at social rents. Half of those, or 22 units, will be family-sized. Every affordable home will be dual aspect, meet or exceed minimum space standards, and include a private balcony. The co-living accommodation has been designed, in the planning report’s words, to ‘exceed minimum standards for this type of accommodation, as well as providing a generous communal amenity space offering’.
Co-living as a typology remains contested in terms of space standards and long-term affordability, so the explicit commitment to exceeding minimum standards and delivering generous communal provision is worth reading carefully in the detail. The planning report’s confirmation that affordable homes meet or exceed minimum space standards and are all dual aspect addresses two of the most persistent criticisms levelled at high-density residential consents in inner London.
Fish Island Village context and the Neptune Wharf masterplan
Wansbeck Road sits within the Neptune Wharf masterplan, originally conceived by architect Stockwool and containing just over 500 homes. The London Legacy Development Corporation approved that masterplan in 2014. The wider site falls inside the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park’s boundaries, placing it within one of London’s most scrutinised regeneration zones.
HTA Design’s Fish Island co-living consent occupies Phase four of the 2014 permission, a plot originally earmarked for a school before McLaren Living appointed HTA to draw up residential proposals. Earlier phases of Neptune Wharf were subsequently redesigned and developed as Fish Island Village, with housing association Peabody appointing Haworth Tompkins as masterplanner alongside Pitman Tozer and Lyndon Goode. Haworth Tompkins secured approval for Phase three in 2020; that phase completed in 2022.
HTA Design associate partner Eleni Stathi described the consent as bringing the masterplan to a close: ‘It is exciting to see this final piece of the Neptune Wharf masterplan take shape.’ Stathi said the design draws on Fish Island’s textile heritage, using what she described as a ‘woven architectural language to create a development that feels rooted in its local context while looking confidently to the future.’
On sustainability and urban resilience, Stathi pointed to ‘a strong focus on sustainability, urban greening and long-term resilience’, framing the project as completing ‘this important part of Hackney Wick with a development that is both rooted in its context and designed for the future.’ The planning report provides the design detail that sits behind those commitments; the specifics of operational carbon performance, fabric specification and the extent of the urban greening provision will be worth tracking as the scheme moves toward reserved matters and discharge of condition.
HTA’s presence in Hackney Wick
The practice has a direct stake in the neighbourhood beyond this commission. HTA’s studio at 75 Wallis Road in Hackney Wick occupies a retrofitted Victorian warehouse that completed in 2023, placing the practice within walking distance of the Fish Island co-living site. That local knowledge of the area’s grain, its industrial character and its evolving residential mix will have informed the woven architectural language Stathi references, though the planning drawings and elevations will ultimately show how far that language translates into built fabric rather than narrative.
With committee consent secured, the next stage for the Wansbeck Road scheme is reserved matters submission and the discharge of pre-commencement planning conditions set by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
