🏙️ Affordability vs. Density

Wednesday 8th October 2025

Camden Submits Plans for Camley Street – 50% Affordable Housing Sets a High Bar

A major announcement on October 8, 2025, saw Camden Council submit planning applications for the £500 million Camley Street regeneration (near King's Cross), set to deliver 401 new homes, with half designated as genuinely affordable council homes.

This project perfectly illustrates the viability challenge in high-value North London locations. While we strongly support the delivery of genuinely affordable homes, the high percentage (50%) in a difficult financial climate (Headline 6) means the commercial market homes must subsidise the affordable element heavily. This squeezes developers' margins and makes the project financially fragile, increasing the risk of the scheme being scaled back or stalling entirely. The pressure to deliver high density and high affordability in North London’s prized brownfield sites is immense.

Robbins Construction Ltd Opinion: We need to be realistic. Either the government needs to provide more direct grant funding to reduce the burden on developers, or councils must be more flexible with the percentage of affordable housing to ensure the entire development remains viable and actually gets built. A great headline plan is useless if the site sits empty because the Cost model doesn't work.