Delancey And APG’s Earls Court Will Be London’s Next BTR Megascheme

The joint venture between Delancey, APG and Transport for London to redevelop the site of the former Earls Court exhibition centre will build more than 1,500 rented homes at the new scheme, creating what will be one of London’s largest build-to-rent developments.

The JV, called the Earls Court Development Company, revealed its masterplan for the site Tuesday. The new scheme will comprise 4,500 new homes, including 1,500, 1,500 rentals, and 1,500 affordable rental and shared ownership homes. 

Those rented homes will be a mixture of BTR, student housing and later living facilities, the company said. 

Bisnow revealed the scheme was likely to switch from the luxury residential for sale plans of previous owner Capco to BTR as far back as October 2018. 

The new scheme will total around 7.35M SF of development, of which 60% will be residential and 40% given over to commercial and cultural uses. A total of 35% of the residential, both for sale and for rent, will be affordable. The Evening Standard pegged the cost of the project at £8B. 

The 1,500 rented homes will make Earls Court smaller than East Village, the BTR scheme created by Delancey when it bought and converted the 2012 London Olympic athletes village. APG is now a part owner of Get Living, the company that owns and manages that site.

With an end total of almost 10,000 units, Quintain’s Wembley Park is London’s largest BTR scheme. 

The Earls Court site totals 40 acres. ECDC said that only 40% will be covered by buildings, with the rest given over to public realm and green space. The site will be largely car-free, but underground parts of the scheme could be used for last-mile logistics space.  

A planning application for the first phase will be submitted later this year, the company said. That will include 1,300 new homes, a third of which will be affordable, rather than pushing the affordable component to the later phases of the project. 

The first phase will also include a new park, at least one office building, new shops and restaurants, cultural and community space, and a new park. 

The scheme will include a next-generation heating network, with energy generated by the UK’s first large-scale zero carbon energy sharing network that could help heat the wider neighbourhood. It will also be all-electric, meaning no fossil fuels will be burned to generate power for the site. 

ECDC bought Earls Court from Capco in 2019 for £425M. The previous planned scheme stalled after fractious relations with local residents and lack of financing led to continuous delays.