Last month, London orough of Southwark adopted the Elephant and Castle Enterprise Quarter SPD and the Walworth Road SPD.

The transformation of the Elephant and Castle is an important part of Southwark’s regeneration strategy and the adoption of the Enterprise Quarter SPD and Walworth Road SPD is a further step towards creating a thriving and successful mixed-use major town centre, that is safe, full of vitality and accessible for all.

The Enterprise Quarter lies immediately to the north-west of the Elephant & Castle round-a-bout and most of the area is taken up by education uses, primarily the London South Bank University. Like UCL in Bloomsbury and Imperial College in South Kensington a key aspiration was to establish the area as a vibrant and prominent education quarter within the existing urban fabric. As part of this strategy the design team sought to enliven existing and create a more people friendly public realm of streets and spaces, improve access into and through the area and introduce new facilities and activities to serve the needs of the University, businesses and residents of the area. In addition the strategy sought to produce more robust guidance in relation to the accommodation of tall buildings at the Elephant & Castle.

The production of the Walworth Road SPD was motivated by the promotion of a number of large scale, high density mixed use developments at the northern end of Walworth Road. In order to provide an appropriate urban design and planning framework for these developments and how they should respond to a number of listed buildings in particular Tibbalds prepared guidance on appropriate land uses, building form and massing, layout and Section 106 contributions.

Tibbalds worked together with Southwark, the GLA and London South Bank University to produce these documents. For further information please see Enterprise Quarter:

http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/planningandbuildingcontrol/planningpolicy/SPDsandSPGs/ElephantandcastleenterprisequarterSPD.html

http://www.southwark.gov.uk/YourServices/planningandbuildingcontrol/planningpolicy/SPDsandSPGs/walworthroadsupplementaryplan.html

Tibbalds involvement with the Elephant & Castle regeneration continues with our ongoing liaison with Southwark’s preferred development partner to secure the delivery of the proposals. Meanwhile the Elephant and Castle regeneration is moving ahead. The residents of the Heygate Estate have started moving into new recently completed homes and demolition is expected to begin 2010. More information on recent events and progress:

www.elephantandcastle.org.uk