McLaren £229m Ebury Bridge phase two: safety and delivery notes for project teams
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Westminster City Council has agreed a £229m budget with McLaren Construction for phase two of the Ebury Bridge regeneration in Knightsbridge and Belgravia, covering three independent and two adjoined residential blocks that required four separate building safety applications to the Building Safety Regulator. The wider scheme will deliver 779 homes across three phases, including 373 for social rent, with phase two adding 334 units, 228 of them for social rent, plus reinstated Ebury Bridge Road retail frontage and new commercial premises. McLaren will use prefabricated façade elements to cut material movements, with main construction starting later in 2025 and completion scheduled for May 2029.
Technical Brief
- Four separate building safety applications were required for phase two’s three standalone and two linked blocks.
- All four complex applications have already been approved by the Building Safety Regulator before main works.
- Prefabricated façade units are being adopted specifically to cut on-site material handling and delivery traffic.
- The estate being redeveloped dates from the 1930s, implying legacy foundations, services and geometry constraints.
- McLaren invested additional time and resource in preconstruction design, aiming to minimise redesign and safety rework.
- New pedestrian routes through the estate are intended to improve permeability between Ebury Bridge and the Thames.
Our Take
Within our 510 Infrastructure stories, very few schemes in central London match Ebury Bridge’s 779-home, three-phase scale, which signals Westminster City Council’s role as one of the more aggressive local authority clients on estate renewal versus piecemeal infill.
The four complex applications to the Building Safety Regulator put McLaren Construction among the early wave of contractors having to navigate the post-Grenfell regime on multi-block schemes, which is likely to front-load design and approvals risk before major works ramp up toward the May 2029 horizon.
Delivering 373 social rent homes in a Knightsbridge/Belgravia-adjacent postcode is unusual in our database, and will raise the bar for viability and land-value capture arguments on other high-value London estate regenerations now moving from outline consent to procurement.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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