Empire Mews

Empire Mews is located off Streatham High Road. The site was previously home to the Hideaway Jazz Club, which closed in February 2020. There’s long been a need for a new hotel in Streatham to accommodate tourists and local businesses. The client team identified that a hotel would make a positive contribution to the local economy through the creation of new jobs and significant local investment. The scheme is located opposite Streatham Railway Station and is in a highly accessible location to public transport options, making the site ideal for a hotel.

The scheme proposed a 114 bedroom Travelodge hotel with flexible commercial uses and had a strong focus on sustainability. The development has been designed to achieve BREEAM Excellent with a wide range of passive and active measures to reduce energy consumption, from improved building fabric construction, electrified heating and hot water via ASHPs and the incorporation of waste water heat recovery systems. The building also incorporates PV panels and green roofs, balancing the requirements for renewable energy generation and urban greenspace. The scheme provides enhances pedestrian accessibility and 100% EV charging points for accessible parking.

Envision worked as part of a multi- disciplinary design team led by Mountford Pigott Architects, with Quod as planning consultants. Envision provided energy and sustainability support through the early stages of design, helping to facilitate the scheme to meet BREEAM Excellent and London Plan energy standards. Our support included co-ordinating various technical studies to ensure that the early time based requirements of BREEAM were fully achieved. Envision led various workshops to facilitate this outcome.

The project, which was subject to a lengthy determination process had to overcome changes to Part L during the scheme development. We leveraged our expertise in energy use within buildings to develop a strategy to achieve a 35% reduction beyond Part L 2021 standards through the use of an all-electric scheme, focusing on demand reduction and measures energy consumption from hot water – the buildings biggest annual demand. Through determination Envision represented the scheme at committee, speaking to committee members of the sustainability initiatives. The support helped to secure a positive planning outcome in June 2023.