New Abbey Wood hotel and residential development submitted

New plans are in for a site in Abbey Wood which will include 110 hotel rooms, 487 co-living units and a vets.

The site, at the junction of Eynsham Drive and Harrow Manorway, previously saw plans approved for flats with revised plans now in.

A car wash on site closed some time ago yet has lay vacant ever since as those plans went nowhere. A PDSA vet will be sited in the new development.

Buildings are set back along Eynsham Drive due to an underground river.

This is the Wogebourne river or Wickham Valley Waterway. Rarely seen now as mostly covered though a brief stretch of covered river did emerge during Elizabeth line construction work.

The river starts up in Shooters Hill before heading through Plumstead, then alongside the railway tracks in Abbey Wood past this proposed development site before entering Southmere Lake nearby.

Southmere Lake is the site of a recently completed development the opposite side of the roundabout to the Abbey Wood plot.

As for the new development, flats are replaced with c0-living which is a bit like student accommodation.

Individuals have a room with shared communal spaces such as kitchens.

There is a small kitchenette inside the bedsit-like rooms, though a bigger kitchen is available.

There will be one large communal kitchen for every 32-34 residents.

Once this site is built out and Peabody get cracking with other plots – particularly along Harrow Manorway where no detailed plans exist for a substantial site – the nearby Cygnet Square should finally have reasonable footfall to fill the commercial units.

A gym is opening alongside a convenience store and hopefully some momentum can now build.

The buildings on Eynsham Drive look decent enough. No cheap-looking stick-on balconies nor randomly placed windows and cladding. All pretty solid grids.

Plans for a hotel in the area have been around for some time. Originally a block recently completed on Felixstowe Road was to be a hotel.

Given it’s a short walk to Abbey Wood station and from there trains head pretty much all over London via the Elizabeth line (Canary Wharf in nine minutes, the City in 15 mins, Heathrow direct etc), Thameslink (direct to St Pancras International, Luton Airport etc) and Southeastern to Greenwich, London Bridge etc) plus direct buses to the o2, it’s a brilliantly connected area these days.

When people are browsing popular hotel websites and are arranging, say, a trip to London to see a gig at the o2, work visit or whatever else it may be, they’ll see how quick it is to reach various areas and so they won’t struggle to sell rooms.

No doubt some will say “who wants to stay there?” and well, Abbey Wood does now have direct trains to Heathrow, Paddington, London Bridge, Liverpool Street, Luton Airport and plenty more. City Airport is less than 15 minutes away via one change.

Local snobbery may exist but no one booking from afield will know or care when they see how well connected it is.

Benefits of development

Which brings me to my favourite subject. Will the area and the authority reap the rewards of such excellent new links? Very likely no.

Greenwich Council are not proposing to revise low Community Infrastructure Levy rates on hotels nor do they have a specific co-living rate. As a growth area in development, some have started to adopt specific co-living CIL rates. A recent Planning Examiner decision backed the council on doing so.

In Greenwich they’re looking to revise residential rates eights years later than planned having lost millions in potential income, yet even now are not looking at changing low rates in major growth areas such as student housing, hotels and co-living.

Plans can be viewed here.