Metropolitan, Wembley Park
Metropolitan is delivering a large-scale district heating network as part of a major regeneration project transforming the area around the National Stadium into a low carbon neighbourhood.
Occupying an 85-acre site, Wembley Park is a landmark urban transformation. The completed community will consist of 8,500 homes, shops, restaurants, leisure facilities, a seven-acre park, nursery, gyms and significant Grade-A office space.
The site is served by a single, zero-carbon ready, community heat hub located under a residential building. The large plant room contains two 1.5MWe CHP engines and three 10MW gas boilers, which will be brought into use as the development grows.
The CHP engines produce both heat, which is fed into the heat network, and electricity, delivered directly into the grid, resulting in carbon savings. From the community heat hub, the heat network pipe infrastructure extends to 20 separate buildings across the development.
As the Wembley Park apartments are to be rented rather than sold it was decided, in an innovative break with common practice, that each apartment would not include an individual Heat Interface Unit (HIU). Instead, central systems feed into each building leading to an increasingly energy efficient heating system and releasing much valued space for the occupier.
Largest Build-to-Rent development
Wembley Park will be the largest Build-to-Rent (BtR) development on a single site in the UK with over 6,000 of the apartments managed by award-winning rental management platform, Quintain Living. The remaining homes are, and will be, a mixture of tenures including discount market rent, affordable rent and key-worker homes from London Borough of Brent and for sale properties.
Flexible approach
The BtR model has required a fresh solution. Metropolitan will be on site seven days a week to deliver exceptional levels of customer service. Metropolitan have a direct relationship with the homeowners alongside a wholesale agreement with the landlord for the BtR customers. This includes high service standards for individual residents and commercial tenants, with enhanced response times. The flexibility of Metropolitan’s approach enabled a new service framework for Quintain’s innovative heating solution to serve the majority of Wembley Park.
The exceptional level of service offered by Metropolitan to all working and living in Wembley Park, mirrors that of our in-house Quintain Living team. After a competitive tender process, we chose Metropolitan because their team listened and understood what we needed and worked tirelessly to deliver to our brief.
James Saunders,
Chief Executive, Quintain