London’s housing crisis could be solved by building on top of existing supermarkets, residential housing and shops, experts have said.
According to research by Apex Airspace, there are 60,000 sites across the capital where two to three storey buildings could be extended using pre-made units.
The company, who have already developed one site on Abbey Road, Camden, aim to create 800 new homes – room for around 2,000 Londoners – over the next four years.
Units, constructed using steel, or in certain circumstances timber, frames form the basis of self-contained flats which are 95 per cent constructed before being taken onsite, could solve the capital’s desperate need for housing, CEO Arshad Bhatti said.
The firm look set to apply for planning permission to build units on top of several Tesco superstores across the capital, with one site likely to house 18 units, he added.
Homes, which will be valued at between £300,000 and £500,000, will also pop up on low rise housing association blocks and rows of shops.
One site has already been acquired close to Tooting Bec Station in south London.
Mr Bhatti, who has worked for 10 years at sister firm, Apex Home Solutions, told the Standard that the capital’s housing crisis has “definitely worsened” over the past decade.
He said: “You have hundreds of thousands of people in temporary accommodation and here you have something that is built off-site and put together in just days.
“You have full-size flats for up to 800 families that cause minimum disruption to existing tenants.”
Mr Bhatti pledged that the company would build 12 social housing flats amid 26 planned for a site on an existing council estate in Southwark.
He also said that the majority of homes would be available on help to buy schemes in a bid to help young families and first time buyers get on the property ladder.
The property mogul added: “These homes are green, carbon free and we hope will take people out of temporary homes.”
He said he came up with the idea after looking up and seeing so many “unused rooftops” in the capital.
“You look up and there is so much space that could be used, building up is a way to create homes without squeezing everything in,” he added.
In research carried out by the firm in 2016, some 475 potential rooftop sites were identified in Camden alone made up of Victorian Terraced houses, luxury townhouses, residential blocks of flats, local authority low-rise flats and small privately owned blocks of flats.
According to Business Insider, property firm Knight Frank has also identified up to 41,000 rooftops on which new homes could be built in central London within zones one and two.
The study, which uses "geospatial mapping software," called Skyward, identified over 28 million square feet of potential residential floor space, with a development value of £51 billion.
Original link - Standard
