A major co-living development with 104 rooms in Harrow town centre has been recommended for approval ahead of a council planning meeting next week.
The plans are for 12–14 College Road, the former Post Office building close to Harrow-on-the-Hill station. The existing locally listed building would be refurbished, with a new block rising to as much as 10 storeys built behind it. Harrow Online first reported on the plans in February when the application was submitted.
At that stage, the proposals included a café and co-working space at street level alongside more than 100 co-living rooms.
The application will now go before Harrow Council’s Planning Committee on Tuesday 6 October, with officers recommending that permission is granted subject to a legal agreement.
104 co-living rooms planned
The scheme would provide 104 studio-style rooms, including 11 accessible rooms, with communal areas for residents.
The ground floor would also contain a café and event or co-working space, while the development would be largely car-free apart from one accessible parking bay.
Residents would not normally be able to apply for local parking permits, while the accommodation would be restricted to a maximum of 104 residents. Rooms would have to be occupied for at least 90 days and could not be used as hotel, hostel or short-term holiday accommodation.
£161,000 affordable housing contribution
As part of the proposed legal agreement, the developer would make a £161,000 affordable housing contribution.
Council officers say this represents the maximum viable contribution following an independent assessment, although their report acknowledges that the amount is “materially below the policy expectation”.
Officers also noted several other issues with the scheme, including two bedrooms being slightly below the recommended 18 square metre size, a shortage of cycle parking and some constrained amenity areas.
Despite this, the report concludes that the shortcomings are not enough to justify refusing the development.
Former Post Office would be retained
The existing three-storey College Road building is locally listed and currently vacant.
Planning officers say the development would bring the building back into use while providing new accommodation on an underused town-centre site.
The 104 co-living rooms would count as the equivalent of around 58 conventional homes for housing monitoring purposes. Objections raised during consultation included concerns about the height and scale of the development, privacy, noise, pressure on local services and anti-social behaviour.
Councillors will make the decision at the Planning Committee meeting on 6 October.
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Chris Mitchell is the founder and editor of Harrow Online, Harrow’s leading local news platform.
He launched Harrow Online in 2010 as a Facebook page sharing local news and information. Since then, it has grown into a trusted source for breaking news, crime, council decisions, planning, transport, business and community stories across the borough.
Harrow Online reaches hundreds of thousands of readers each month and has a social media audience of more than 200,000 followers.
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