Key Details

Overview

Kensington Forum is a mixed-use development at the Holiday Inn hotel site on Cromwell Road, London SW7.

The development will provide a world-class hotel and serviced apartment scheme alongside 62 genuinely affordable homes and substantial public realm improvements.

The new scheme, designed by SimpsonHaugh, will replace the existing 906 room hotel with an exceptional high-quality development providing outstanding visitor accommodation for the future including restaurants, bars, health spa and conference facilities, vital to supporting London’s continued role as a world city and major global destination.

Alongside the hotel will be a new, publicly accessible and sensitively designed 2,700sqm garden square, more than doubling the size of the existing green space, which will be the only publicly accessible green area within 1km of the site.

History

2020 October - The latest plans for the mixed-use development are approved by the Deputy Mayor for London.

2019 June - Mayor called in the plans last year after they had been thrown out by Kensington and Chelsea. Queensgate Investments and Rockwell's called in plans for a 749-room hotel and serviced apartment redevelopment of the Kensington Forum Hotel in central London have been rubberstamped by the mayor of London after the duo agreed to provide 100% social houisng. The application to redevelop the Kensington Forum Hotel will deliver 62 homes, all of which will be available at social rent levels for Londoners on low incomes. The proposals were rejected by the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in September 2018, before the Mayor assumed responsibility for the application in order to subject it to further scrutiny in November. Queensgate and Rockwell agreed to increase the number of homes to 62 and make all of them affordable. They had previously proposed for 20 of the original 46 homes to be affordable. The mayor said Kensington and Chelsea has "consistently failed to meet the Mayor’s housing targets in recent years, and the Mayor has pushed his planning powers to their limits in order to deliver more affordable homes in the borough". The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: “I welcome the developer committing to provide 100 per cent social housing in this scheme – in a borough that has consistently failed to meet its housing targets. Having considered all the evidence available to me, I have decided to approve this application.”

2018 - Planning application submitted for: Comprehensive redevelopment and erection of part 30, part 22, and part 7 storey building comprising hotel bedrooms and serviced apartments (Class C1) with ancillary bar, restaurants, conferencing and dining areas, leisure facilities, and back of house areas; and new homes [including affordable homes] (Class C3); with associated basement, energy centre, plant, car parking, cycle parking, refuse stores, and servicing areas; associated highway works; and creation of new publicly accessible open space with associated hard and soft landscaping. Kensington & Chelsea ref. no. PP/18/03461.

2016 - Queensgate Investments bought the hotel financed by SocGen for around £400m in 2016 from Apollo Global Management.

The Kensington Forum Hotel was built by Penta between 1971 and 1972. It was later renamed the London Forum and is now known as the Kensington Forum. The hotel building is 28 storeys high, has 906 rooms, and was designed by architect Richard Seifert.