Westminster City Council’s Dudley House mixed-use scheme reaches completion
7 April 2020
Work has completed on Westminster City Council’s flagship affordable residential-led development. Currie & Brown was appointed to provide building surveying, cost management, principal designer and project management services on the project.
Located in the centre of the Paddington Basin regeneration area, Dudley House will provide 197 affordable homes for rent alongside a new permanent home for the 840 pupils of Marylebone Boys’ School, which will occupy the southern end of the site. The development also includes a purpose-built place of worship and retail amenities, allowing the site to become a fully functioning neighbourhood.
Currie & Brown worked collaboratively alongside delivery partners Willmott Dixon and architects Child Graddon Lewis in a challenging location overlooking the Westway, an elevated section of the busy A40. The project aims to achieve a BREEAM rating of ‘Very Good’ via a combination of thermal and electrical energy from a CHP boiler combined with photovoltaic roof panels.
Richard Cairnes, director at Currie & Brown, explained: “Working collaboratively has allowed us to deliver both the school in time for the new school year and a range of affordable homes for the Westminster area. We thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and are pleased to have been a part of this fantastic team.”
Councillor Melvyn Caplan, cabinet member for finance, property and regeneration and deputy leader for Westminster City Council, said: “With just two per cent of homes in Westminster available for those on average or ‘intermediate’ incomes, our priority is to ensure that people who work here have a chance of living here too. This means people like teachers, doctors and nurses, who are doing vital work in the borough, can live locally to where they work.
“We want to lead the way when it comes to building affordable new homes. Dudley House is an example of how a local authority, working with partners, can build affordable and attractive properties in the middle of the capital city with an intense crush on its housing stock and high rents. We’re leading an ambitious programme to deliver 1,850 affordable homes by 2023, and Dudley House is an important milestone in that work.”