Jay Morton, Director at Bell Phillips and this year’s chair of the British Homes Awards judging panel, is passionate about actionable solutions for affordable housing. She talks about the success of Bell Phillips’ Cosway Street project, balancing carbon footprints with social justice and the idea of a chain of benefit in housing.
Let’s start with Cosway Street, which was successful in the last edition of the British Homes Awards. Tell us about that in your own words?
“That was headed up by one of the other directors, Tom Morgan. I think the reason why it is so successful is because even though it’s next to a grade II Listed church, it’s not what some people might expect or think that the planners might want. It was about creating a piece of architecture that stands on its own: it isn’t trying to be too timid, it’s creating its own history, which I think is important. It's also quite dense and a great example of how you can have medium density within the city.
Can you talk me through another Bell Phillips project you are particularly proud of?
There’s another project in Southwark called Albion Street in Rotherhithe, which is about to complete. It includes affordable housing and has also really improved the urban realm. There's going to be retail and commercial at the ground floor, which helps add another side to the high street. It's also got a scallop detail too, so I think it’s also like a sister project to Cosway Street. It’s a white brick building and has a quality feel to it, beautiful balconies and really good daylight. Plus, it’s really low maintenance and will stand the test of time.
Tell me about the idea of a ‘chain of benefit’?
I talk about this often, whether it’s in the context of a project we did years ago in Greenwich - featuring small bungalows on an infill site - or Marklake Court, a community-led housing scheme in Southwark. In that case, building 25 homes on a former garage site created a chain of benefit that helped 100 families, as residents were able to move around the estate. Similarly, with Cosway Street, we created a chain of benefit by unlocking funds for the local authority to invest in affordable housing.
What’s on the minds of those involved in designing and building within the residential sector?
The climate challenge is a big one. In the UK, we have the 1.5 million homes target but that’s going to use all of our carbon budget by 2050 and how do you square that? As a practice, we’re doing our own research as to how can we reduce the embodied carbon of our buildings. As well as the climate challenge, there's a social justice element too: the fact that we need to build homes to house our population. We won the William Sutton prize (awarded for innovation in social housing by Clarion Futures, the charitable foundation of Clarion Housing Group) for a piece of work exploring bio-based materials: timber frame, hemp insulation and lime-based render. That's been picked up by Clarion to then turn into a real project. Things have also moved on in the way Passivhaus has been viewed too. Just a few years ago, you wouldn't have considered it for mass housing because it was thought that it was too expensive to do. But actually, you can and should be doing it for affordable housing. Among the projects Bell Phillips are working on is the Ealing Passivhaus, consisting of 134 mixed-tenure homes across six redundant and underused brownfield sites in Ealing for Ealing Council. The six developments, of varying types and scales, will include 70% affordable homes with 73 at London Affordable Rents. The homes have been designed to Passivhaus standards to reduce energy consumption, address fuel poverty and meet Ealing Council’s commitment to deliver net zero carbon homes.
What’s on the horizon for 2025 and beyond?
We know and love and will always want to work for local authorities but we’re also looking at diversifying more into commercial projects. We’re excited to be working in other cities as well as London, which is exciting. We have just won planning for a Build to Rent scheme as part of the Smithfield redevelopment by Lendlease. The Smithfield site in Birmingham is one of the first of those to be built. The building is going to front what will be a new public square. Within the design, we’re referencing the fact that Birmingham is the city of 1000 trades, bringing in that element of craft to the building. We’ve also got a large student housing scheme in Manchester, which will be on site in 2026.
