Woolwich Leisure Centre

The residential element of 482 new homes have been positioned and designed to worked with the existing urban fabric, optimising the development potential of this highly accessible site whilst respecting on-site and nearby heritage assets.

The development is key to delivering the Council’s vision for Woolwich and that of the GLA who have an ambition for Woolwich to move from a Major Town Centre to a Metropolitan Centre.

Supporting health, well-being and inclusivity within Woolwich was a key driver for the Project. The Leisure Centre will provide new opportunities for residents to lead more healthy and active lifestyles through increasing participation in sports and other activities. A specific example of this was the interaction of the Woolwich Leisure Centre with the adjacent public realm.

A key design concept for the Leisure Centre was how the building’s design can help to improve public participation in sport, with active spaces being outward facing, a concept supported by planning policy. However, it is important to retain privacy, particularly for swimming pool users. The design therefore incorporated a band of translucent fritting to the glazed facade, and blinds. The fritting is strategically located to an isolated zone of the glazing and is intended to obscure a pool users faces rather than to provide a full opaque screen. When full privacy is occasionally required for particular user groups, the blinds can be lowered temporality.

Working with the team, Tibbalds ensured this was clearly articulated to LPA and GLA, demonstrating that the design meets policy aspirations by allowing movement and activity to be seen behind the glazing, whilst maintaining privacy and inclusivity. The design response was supported by planning officers.

We advised the client team on the implications of this approach for the main planning application - for example that the baseline position would change and there would be implications in respect of the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) liability. These planning considerations were clearly set out by Tibbalds to inform a project-wide decision - for example, financially, paying business rates could be weighed against the increased CIL liability.

Tibbalds and the RBG appointed team worked alongside the Council's development partner and joint applicant for the application, The Hill Group, and their appointed team. This made coordination and clear messaging in planning presentations and meetings very important. We therefore ‘frontloaded’ these conversations with the client team well ahead of any such meetings. Our approach and use of a planning issues matrix helped us, our clients and the multidisciplinary teams we worked with to concentrate on key issues of debate from the outset. Pre-application agendas, meetings and advice were focussed on these key issues, rather than using up valuable time on ‘agreed’ issues. An example of this related to a locally listed public house on the site which was retained and enhanced in the application, with the narrative around this carefully considered with due regards to planning, heritage and deliverability.

Full planning permission was granted in December 2022. Tibbalds supported RBG and the appointed contractor on planning matters throughout the construction process of the now completed Leisure Centre.