The Deputy Mayor for Planning, Regeneration and the Fire Service has approved plans to redevelop Phoenix Academy in White City, including 307 homes and a replacement school. He took the decision after the Mayor called in the application from Hammersmith & Fulham, which had resolved to refuse it.
The approval is subject to a legal agreement. The formal planning permission notice will follow once the section 106 agreement is completed, so the scheme is not yet at the point where permission has been issued.
The GLA’s decision report says the proposal would provide 90 Social Rent homes and 8,091 square metres of education floorspace. The developer says the wider project includes a £42 million investment in the school.
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What the Phoenix Academy scheme includes
The Phoenix Academy application, reference 2025/02541/FUL, covers the demolition of the existing school buildings and redevelopment of the site for a school of up to five storeys, alongside two residential buildings ranging from two to eight storeys. The education space is stated as gross internal area in the GLA Stage 3 report.
The 307 flats would be arranged around the replacement academy. The developer, London Square, says 56 of the 90 Social Rent homes would have three or four bedrooms, a larger family-sized offer than is often available in new schemes. That bedroom mix comes from the applicant’s announcement; the GLA report’s formal affordable-housing measure is different.
There are also proposed public-realm, landscape and transport measures. The scheme is car-free for residents, according to the GLA report, with servicing and access arrangements addressed through the plans and planning conditions. The report also identifies mitigation and financial contributions to be secured through the legal agreement.
Why the council refused the application
Hammersmith & Fulham’s planning committee resolved to refuse the Phoenix Academy application on 14 April 2026. Its concerns covered the design and effects of the development as well as the balance of housing and school needs. The council’s committee report set out eight reasons, including the scale and massing, harm to the Old Oak and Wormholt Conservation Area, daylight and sunlight effects, sports provision, affordable housing, biodiversity, tree loss and school parking.
Those were the local authority’s planning judgments, not a rejection of the need for homes in the area. The Mayor’s office had to assess the application against the development plan and the planning balance, taking the committee report and refusal reasons into account. For background, see our overview of mayoral planning powers.
The applicant asked for the Mayor to take over the application on 22 May. On 1 June, Deputy Mayor Jules Pipe directed that he would act as the local planning authority. This is a mayoral call-in under the Town and Country Planning (Mayor of London) Order 2008, rather than a planning appeal. It transfers the decision to the Mayor’s office; it does not ask an inspector to decide whether the council’s decision was legally wrong.
How the GLA reached a different view
The GLA held a public hearing on 28 September to consider the Phoenix Academy scheme and published a Stage 3 report recommending conditional approval. The report weighs the housing and school benefits against the effect on the conservation area, neighbours and other planning considerations. It concludes that the less-than-substantial heritage harm would be outweighed by the public benefits of the proposal.
The report also acknowledges that the development could cause limited daylight effects, but considers those effects acceptable in the circumstances. Following the call-in, the applicant submitted revised material, including minor drawing changes to address building-regulations and fire-safety matters. The GLA says those revisions did not require another round of public consultation.
At the hearing, the GLA considered an addendum that recorded a further objection. It raised concerns about capacity on bus route 72, combined effects from construction and match days at QPR, and protecting pupil journeys to Jack Tizard School. The hearing addendum records those points alongside the GLA’s response.
What “37% affordable housing” means here
For Phoenix Academy, the GLA report describes the offer as 37% affordable housing by habitable-room equivalent, resulting in 90 Social Rent dwellings. That percentage is not the share of the 307 flats when counted as individual homes. Ninety divided by 307 is about 29% by unit count.
The two measures answer different questions. Habitable-room calculations give more weight to larger homes, while the unit calculation simply counts each flat once. The GLA’s 37% figure therefore reflects the former measure; saying that 37% of the homes are affordable would overstate the proportion by unit count.
All 90 affordable homes are proposed as Social Rent. The developer has said that 36 would be three-bedroom homes and 20 would have four bedrooms. The GLA report says the detail and delivery of the affordable housing will be secured through the section 106 agreement.
The legal agreement is the next step
The GLA’s decision report recommends that planning permission be granted subject to completion of the section 106 agreement and delegates authority to finalise its terms and issue the notice. The published draft agreement names the GLA, the Mayor, Hammersmith & Fulham, Future Academies and London Square Developments as parties. It is a draft, not a signed agreement.
The draft conditions include a phasing requirement intended to maintain education provision while the school is redeveloped. The final agreement and conditions will define the obligations attached to the permission. Until the agreement is completed and the formal notice issued, the decision remains conditional.
London Square’s chief executive, Lawrence Foley, called the decision “a hugely significant moment for Phoenix Academy, its pupils, staff and the wider community”. That is the applicant’s response; the final permission documents will show the binding requirements that sit alongside the approval.
Today’s deadline for the proposed mayoral powers
The case comes as the government’s consultation on planning powers for mayors in England closes at 23:59 today, 5 October 2026. The consultation covers proposals for mayoral planning powers outside London, drawing on London’s model while proposing a framework for English strategic authorities. It does not make the existing London call-in process apply automatically to every mayoral authority.
The government says it expects relevant secondary legislation by the end of 2026, with commencement planned for early 2027, subject to the consultation and parliamentary timetable. The proposal is separate from this Phoenix Academy decision, which was taken under the existing London arrangements. The consultation page sets out the proposed scope and deadline.
For White City, the immediate test is whether the parties complete an agreement that secures the affordable homes, education and mitigation measures. Once the notice is issued, the public can see the final conditions and obligations against which the redevelopment would proceed.
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