The Earls Court Partnership's hybrid planning application for the biggest element of one of London's largest development projects is set to be approved by Hammersmith and Fulham council.
Plans for the giant project are complicated by the fact that the 18-hectare (44-acre) cleared development site, the largest in the capital, straddles two London Boroughs, with 10 hectares on the Hammersmith & Fulham side. A similar hybrid planning application has been submitted to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea for the development of another 8 hectares.
Combined, the applications propose a circa 7.5-million-square-foot redevelopment of a site that was home to the Earls Court exhibition halls.
The hybrid applications were submitted to both Boroughs in August 2024, with changes made in September 2025 following consultation. They included an increase to the minimum number of homes on the Hammersmith & Fulham side of the site, minor reductions to the height of some buildings, improvements to proposed cycle routes, updates to the detailed design proposals to take into account changed fire safety regulations, and more community spaces.
The hybrid planning application, part in detail and part-outline, for the Hammersmith and Fulham site goes in front of its planning committee on Wednesday. It takes in land bounded by North End Road, Beaumont Avenue, West Cromwell Road, West London Railway Line, Lillie Road, land comprising the Empress State Building, Aisgill Avenue, the former Gibbs Green School and properties fronting Dieppe Close.
The outline proposals are for up to 4.014 million square feet of mixed-use floorspace including up to 2,044 homes, a hotel, senior housing, offices and/or research and development, education, retail, food and beverage, leisure facilities, cultural facilities, storage and distribution, community and social facilities and sui generis uses.
There are also detailed proposals for four buildings comprising 1 million square feet ranging between 13 and 42 storeys in height and taking in 456 homes, a 696-room student accommodation block, up to 34,821 square feet of flexible retail, food & beverage, commercial and/or cultural floorspace, 22,734 square feet of leisure floorspace and 4,542 square feet of community floorspace.
The detailed component would include 35% affordable homes comprising a mix of social rented and intermediate tenures.
Hammersmith planning officers recommend the plans are granted permission subject to completion of a satisfactory legal agreement. They write: "The proposed development would contribute to the regeneration of the area, improve employment opportunities, and promote sustainable economic growth. The size and location of the proposed retail floorspace are considered not to compromise the vitality or viability of surrounding centres. The proposed development would be an appropriate mix of uses within the Earl’s Court and West Kensington Opportunity Area which is well served and accessible by public transport."
The separate plans lodged with Kensington and Chelsea are outline proposals for up to 204,000 square metres of floorspace for residential or up to 1,090 homes, a hotel, senior housing, offices and/or research and development, education, retail, food and beverage and other commercial uses as well as sui generis uses.
The detailed proposals are for two buildings of up to 109m and 79m in height for residential use at up to 42,058 square metres to provide up to 310 homes and non-residential uses comprising up to 1,451 square metres of retail/food and beverage/commercial floorspace, and up to 361 square metres of community/social floorspace.
The Earls Court Development Company was set up in 2019. It is responsible for managing the proposed redevelopment proposals. The applications have been submitted on behalf of Earls Court Partnership Limited, which owns the greatest portion of the site. In 2019, the applicant took ownership of part of the site from the previous landowners, in a joint venture with Delancey (on behalf of its client funds) and APG, the Dutch pension fund. The rest of the land within the Earls Court site is owned by Transport for London and comprises the Lillie Bridge Depot land.
In 2020, Hawkins Brown and Studio Egret West were appointed as masterplan architects. Sheppard Robson, Serie and dRMM architects, along with landscape design architects Stig Lennart Andersson, have prepared the detailed components in Hammersmith and Fulham.
For a detailed review of the plans, the history of the famous site and an interview with the developers click here.
The plans have pledged to focus on "clean and climate tech" with 2.5 million square feet of workspace, three anchor cultural venues, a zero-carbon energy network and a zero operational carbon target as the basis of the development.