Green light for Ballymore housing plan

The Ballymore Group has won council approval for a plan to turn a former DHL depot and adjoining land into almost 2,000 houses at a site beside Battersea Power Station in London.

A total of 1,626 to 1,982 apartments may be built, as well as shops, a car showroom, a 100-bed hotel and offices, according to the application.

The site is known as Embassy Gardens and will be developed next to a five-acre plot sold to the US in 2009 for a new embassy.

Ernst & Young, the administrators appointed to companies that control Battersea Power Station, had objected to the retail aspect of the development, saying it represented a “real and significant threat to the future viability and ultimate delivery” of the plan to redevelop the derelict station.

Battersea was put into administration in by creditors led by Lloyds Banking Group and Nama in December. That site is expected to be put on the market in the first quarter of this year.

Nama wrote to the council saying it supported Ballymore’s plan and that it believed Ernst & Young’s objections were commercially “misguided”.

Ballymore is owned by Irish businessman Sean Mulryan.

— Bloomberg