The design by Archio for the Felixstowe Road site shows a street of mews houses opening onto a play street with shared green spaces (courtesy of Archio)
Susan Road & Felixstowe Road, Greenwich
Status: Planning received for Susan Road; application submitted for Felixstowe Road
Size: 16 homes (1 and 2-bedroom flats and houses) across 2 sites
About
In 2022, Greenwich Citizens Housing (GCH), a volunteer-run local campaigning group, and London CLT were selected by the local council to steward two sites in Greenwich through a competitive bidding process, marking a significant milestone in the campaign's history.
Susan Road, located in the Kidbrooke area to the west, is currently occupied by garages where local residents identified the need for a safer, greener pedestrian route to Kidbrooke Parade. Felixstowe Road, situated in Abbey Wood on the border of Greenwich and Bexley, is overgrown and disused, offering an opportunity to create a safe play street and community green spaces.
Both projects have since been submitted for planning with grant support from the GLA. The Susan Road development has been approved, with construction due to begin in 2025, while the Felixstowe Road project is still awaiting a planning decision.
The design
Across the two sites, there will be a total of 16 new CLT homes, made up of a mix of one and two bedroom flats and houses.
The Susan Road development includes seven homes divided between two modest, low-rise housing schemes which carefully respond to their immediate neighbours. These proposals will enhance the surroundings and public realm, with a particular focus on improving the well-used pedestrian route from Susan Road to Kidbrooke Parade. Improved planting and lighting will make the route feel safer, which is especially important for children walking to and from the nearby Thomas Tallis School.
The Felixstowe Road development consists of nine individual two-storey homes: a mix of one- and two-bedroom houses. The homes will sit alongside a pedestrianised ‘play street’ featuring natural play equipment, seating, compost stores, and bicycle storage, encouraging active doorstep play overseen by the front-facing homes. Landscaping along the street will create opportunities for community gathering, planting, and food growing. Both the Susan Road and Felixstowe Road developments will incorporate Passivhaus construction to reduce energy use and bills, maximising daylight and views of nature. The design prioritises informal social interaction and provides shared communal spaces for organised activities and events.
Above, designs for the Susan Road sites (courtesy of Archio). Below, the choose your architect day in November 2022
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Campaign history
Led by Greenwich Citizens Housing (GCH), campaigning for affordable housing in Greenwich in the form of a CLT began in 2018, reaching out to many local people to join the campaign and input into the plans. Since then, GCH and members of the community have been working together with local Greenwich Councillors to get commitments to bring a CLT to the borough. In the summer of 2019, GCH met with architects from Archio to learn more about the design process and start to imagine what a CLT could look like. In December 2019, we held an open-air gathering to meet local residents at a prospective CLT site in Kidbrooke, and a month later Nathanael Hitch, on behalf of GCH, collected the South London Citizens award for Action Team of the Year on 21 January 2020.
Of course, along then came Covid, and plans for further actions at other prospective sites in Greenwich had to be put on hold, but that didn’t stop GCH learning, working, and planning, including formalising its relationships with London CLT as a key delivery partner and Greenwich Citizens to work on outreach, as well as strengthening links to Greenwich Council and working to educate stakeholders about CLTs.
We were all thrilled about Greenwich Council’s decision in June 2021 to release two sites for CLT housing, one in Abbey Wood (Felixstowe Road), and the other in Kidbrooke (Susan Road) – the very site of GCH’s action in December 2019.
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Photos of the Felixstowe Road site, November 2022
Then the hard work really began – the Council’s competitive tendering process meant GCH and London CLT needed to put together a formal bid for the sites. GCH ramped up its work building relationships with communities around the sites, meeting with a resident group from Abbey Wood and introducing them to the idea of CLTs and holding a training session in the area in September 2021, inviting local people to join GCH’s Community Steering Group.
“To actually be working with architects and the local residents at such an early phase - pre even getting the site - is kind of radical. It’s not whitewash participation, it’s real and also the most fun part of being part of a community group like this.” - Jake Sherwood, Greenwich Citizens Housing
The tendering process formally started at the end of November 2021 and closed at the end of January 2022. During this intense 2-month period, GCH, London CLT and Archio had regular workshops to put together a bid that reflected the needs of the neighbours and wider community. After a long and nervous wait, we were delighted to find out that we had been successful with our bid.
Once the agreement on the sites was secured, GCH and London CLT worked to begin the community-led design process, meeting regularly and holding local outreach events to expand the Community Steering Group and listen to residents’ concerns and hopes for the project. On 19 November 2022, GCH held a full day “Choose your architect” event across both neighbourhoods – Kidbrooke and Abbey Wood. Local people were invited to join through doorknocking and leafleting organised by GCH in the week before the event, and had the chance to get involved in this vital step. Presented with two great architecture practices with different approaches to community-led design, 50+ community members who stopped by the event chose to stick with Archio and embark on an intensive design process. Archio engaged in a genuinely community-led design process, involving local people in both neighbourhoods. In summer 2024, with GCH we submitted the designs for planning permission.
