Harrow Council has issued the formal decision notice granting final planning permission for the redevelopment of the former Civic Centre site, clearing the way for more than 1,000 new homes in the heart of the borough. The milestone follows the completion of a Section 106 agreement and arrives almost a year after councillors first resolved to approve the scheme.
The £360 million project, known as Poets Corner, will be delivered by Wates Residential working with the council through the Harrow Strategic Development Partnership. It is the flagship element of a wider £690 million regeneration partnership between the developer and the borough, which is ultimately expected to deliver around 1,500 homes across Harrow.
Detailed consent covers the first phase: 530 homes across three blocks rising to 12 storeys. Of those, 422 will be build-to-rent apartments, while the remaining 108 are earmarked as London Living Rent homes aimed at middle-income households. Outline approval has also been granted for a further 528 homes in later phases, with buildings rising to as high as 15 storeys.
Early works are already under way. The council approved demolition and other preparatory activity earlier this year, and site teams have begun clearing the ground ahead of the main construction programme. The decision notice removes the last planning hurdle standing in the way of full-scale building work.
Affordable homes, jobs and public space secured
The completed Section 106 agreement locks in at least 192 affordable homes across the development. Alongside the housing, it secures a package of employment and training commitments: 35 apprenticeships, 63 work experience placements and 210 jobs reserved for local labour.
The plans also promise two new public spaces totalling around 7,500 square metres, plus more than 4,000 square metres of dedicated children’s play space — a significant new tranche of open space for the town centre.
Sheppard Robson is acting as lead architect and masterplanner, with BDP on landscape design, Stantec handling planning, civils and structures, and WSP delivering building services and sustainability work.
Why the scheme matters for Harrow
Harrow is one of London’s fastest-growing outer boroughs, and pressure on housing supply has been building for years. Like much of the capital, the borough is grappling with rising rents, long waiting lists for social housing and a generation of younger residents struggling to get a foot on the property ladder. Against that backdrop, a 1,000-home scheme on a single town-centre site is a rare and significant addition to supply.
The mix is telling. Build-to-rent has become one of the fastest-growing segments of London’s housing market, aimed squarely at professionals who want the flexibility of renting with the security of a professionally managed home. Large-scale regeneration deals of this kind are reshaping other parts of the capital too, including the Charlton Riverside agreement in Greenwich, which is set to deliver more than 3,000 new riverside homes.
The borough’s push for affordable provision echoes moves elsewhere: 326 new social rent homes are on the way in Ilford after the Greater London Authority released fresh grant funding, while Southwark has overhauled its social housing allocation system to cope with surging demand.
What is London Living Rent?
Of the 530 homes in the detailed first phase, 108 are designated as London Living Rent — a form of intermediate affordable housing backed by the Mayor of London. It is aimed at middle-income households who earn too much to qualify for social housing but cannot yet afford to buy.
Rents are typically set at around a third of average local household incomes, deliberately below market levels so that tenants can save for a deposit while renting. The homes are let on assured shorthold tenancies, and tenants get first refusal to buy their home — either outright or through shared ownership — if it is ever sold.
Including more than a hundred such homes in the first phase gives the Poets Corner scheme a tenure mix that goes beyond the standard build-to-rent offer, and it will be watched closely by other boroughs weighing up how to squeeze genuinely affordable homes out of town-centre regeneration.
With the decision notice now issued, attention turns to construction. The Harrow Strategic Development Partnership’s wider programme is expected to deliver around 1,500 homes across the borough in total, making the Civic Centre scheme the decisive first chapter in one of north-west London’s most ambitious regeneration stories.
