People power: why the Battersea Power Station redevelopment will have a village feel

In-house social networks, independent shops and open-air wi-fi — the redevelopment of Battersea Power Station is not all about luxury flats. The man in charge tells Jonathan Prynn why he wants a village feel
3 April 2014

Rob Tincknell, the man in charge of central London’s biggest building site, is coming over all wistful about the idyllic rural retreat that is his Somerset family home: “I just couldn’t survive London without my village life.”

He says he loves being able to walk into The Red Lion in Babcary and chat to locals about how things are going with his day job up in town regenerating Battersea Power Station.

Babcary (population 248) and the vast south London development (future population 10,000) may seem worlds apart but Tincknell is convinced that Londoners are crying out for “parish pump” values and is determined to hardwire them into the scheme.

“That is why so many people move out of London to the country. But our residents will be able to walk into their restaurants and they will be greeted, ‘Hello, Mr and Mrs Jones, how are you? Would you like your favourite table?’ and they’ll be made to feel special because that’s what a community does.”

It is an idealistic, some might say Utopian, vision but Tincknell — chief executive of the Battersea Power Station Development Company — points to the huge success of events such as the Diamond Jubilee, the royal wedding and the Olympics as proof of the huge and largely untapped demand for shared experiences in London.

He is also inspired by Glastonbury Festival — “190,000 people in a field just wanting to get on with each other” — which he attends every year near his family home.

His philosophy for the future of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s cathedral of power is summed up in a new 23 page Community Charter — a paean to the joys of “shared purpose and will” over “rugged individualism”, with 10 pledges that he says will act as a road map towards the thriving close-knit community he hopes for.

The charter — endorsed by Mayor Boris Johnson and Communities Secretary Eric Pickles — is his own work but draws heavily on the ideas of development director David Twohig, an Irishman from “the small seaside town of Kinsale”, which has had the same formative impact on him as Babcary has had on his boss.

One small example of what they have in mind are clauses built into the contracts of restaurants and other commercial tenants that they will endeavour to hire staff from within the Battersea Power Station “village”.

“So if you’ve got a family living there with a son coming home from university he can get a job in the local restaurant,” says Tincknell. “All the people who live there will get first dibs on events like wine promotions. The restaurants will look after the residents above them.”

Tincknell says he hated living briefly in a rival developer’s scheme on the river where people avoided eye contact and conversation when they bumped into each other, even in the lifts, and is appalled by the “staggering statistic” that 85 per cent of Londoners do not know their neighbours.

The plans for Battersea all but compel residents to get to know each other. All 18 acres of open space will be fully wi-fi’d up so that residents can sit there to go online rather than be cooped up pursuing “rugged individualism” in their flats. Inside the buildings there will be “generous lounge-like lobby spaces to encourage informal ‘over the fence’ conversations”.

Each phase of the construction will have a communal “village hall” space and a huge noticeboard — the urban modern equivalent of the parish magazine — advertising jobs, events and public transport news.

There will also be an in-house social network, a kind of private Facebook, that will allow residents to get in touch with each other if, for example, some singleton is looking for someone else to go on a cycle ride with.

Tincknell says he wants his village to be teeming with independent shops and restaurants. While there is no formal “no chains” policy, it is clear he believes Starbucks and Yo Sushi are not for his

£8 billion baby. “What would you rather have, a Starbucks or a Milk Bar? Why would you go to one of the big chains when you can go to one of those amazing independent coffee shops?”

Marketing for the commercial premises starts later in the spring but Tincknell says hundreds of shop owners and restaurateurs have already registered interest. Phase one will have eight restaurants and those wanting to take units range from “signature celebrity chefs to local favourites”.

He adds: “Some other schemes in London struggle to lease their restaurants on the waterfront. We could lease ours 10 times over and we haven’t even tried yet. We’ve got so much demand, and it’s because they appreciate the aspiration and community-driven nature of the project.”

It is a noble endeavour but how will he stop Battersea Power Station simply becoming yet another empty mausoleum owned by foreigners who are rarely there to turn the lights on? That would fatally undermine any ambitions to create a “Babcary-on-Thames”.

Tincknell says he wants to fill the 3,500 homes with “Londoners” — in the broadest sense of the word — who buy into his village vision and hints that he would rather not sell to people who don’t. “I don’t want to judge but if you can select a group of buyers who really get the whole community aspect... why would I not sell my homes to those people rather than distant investors looking for a place to store cash — you just wouldn’t do it.”

Tincknell — who has already bought a townhouse in the first phase — diplomatically gives as an example of the sort of “new Londoners” he has in mind: his boss Tan Sri Liew, the Malaysian chairman of the Battersea Power Station Development Company.

“He spends a week in London every six weeks with his family and they’ve got a couple of homes in Soho. I would argue he contributes a lot to the fabric of London — he’s always here doing things, he is almost a local, and that’s the kind of people you want.”

Tincknell says the Malaysian-owned developer company could have made another £1 billion from the development by stuffing the power station solely with luxury apartments and flogging them off to the highest bidder. But that would have created a soulless dormitory and instead six storeys of less valuable office space will be included in the interests of creating a genuine mixed-use “work, rest and play” community.

The sale of the first phase — blocks of new buildings called Circus West — was wildly successful with virtually all 866 apartments sold in four days.

The sales campaign for phase two launches in May and will be aimed directly and exclusively at Londoners. “We don’t have pictures of Harrods in our brochures, we’re not explaining in our sales bumf that ‘Nine Elms is south of the river Thames which flows through the middle of London’. When you put that in a brochure you know exactly who you’re targeting. That’s not what we’re doing here.”

London has long been portrayed as a “city of villages”, such as Highgate, Barnes and Kew. Never before has anyone tried to create a new village from scratch in the heart of the Great Wen. Could we yet see morris dancing in the shadow of those unmistakeable concrete towers?

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in