Morgan Sindall’s £69m Hackney baths upgrade: design and heritage notes for engineers
Reviewed by Joe Ashwell
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Morgan Sindall Construction has started a £68.7m refurbishment of Hackney’s Grade II-listed Kings Hall Leisure Centre, originally opened in 1897, under the Southern Construction Framework. Works include retaining the existing large pool while adding a second full-size pool and a smaller teaching pool, plus a double-height sports hall, extended gym and studio spaces, and a fully accessible new entrance from Clapton Square. FaulknerBrowns Architects and Alan Baxter Civil & Structural Engineering are leading design, with completion targeted for autumn 2028 and careful retention of the historic façade, glazed brickwork and balustrades.
Technical Brief
- £68.7m capex delivered under the Southern Construction Framework procurement route for Hackney Council.
- Morgan Sindall’s London team is main contractor, coordinating multiple heritage refurbishment and new-build workstreams.
- Design and engineering led by FaulknerBrowns Architects with Alan Baxter as civil and structural consultant.
- AtkinsRéalis acting as cost consultant, providing cost control on phased refurbishment and extension works.
- Hadron Consulting engaged as project consultant, supporting programme, risk and stakeholder management.
- Ares Landscape Architects responsible for external realm and interface with Clapton Square public space.
- Handover is programmed for autumn 2028, implying a multi-year, live-urban construction sequence.
- Lessons from Morgan Sindall’s 2021 four-storey Britannia Leisure Centre build are being transferred to methodology here.
Our Take
Within our 489 Infrastructure stories, London borough leisure and civic refurbishments like Kings Hall Leisure Centre tend to face longer programme risk from heritage constraints than new-build assets such as the nearby Britannia Leisure Centre, which contractors need to price into prelims and contingency.
Use of the Southern Construction Framework (SCF) on this Hackney scheme aligns with a cluster of other London public-sector projects in our database where councils have leaned on SCF to lock in Tier 1 delivery capacity amid inflation, signalling that direct OJEU competitions are becoming less common for complex refurbishments.
The 1897 opening date for Kings Hall means structural and services integration will likely resemble hospital and school retrofit work seen elsewhere in our coverage, where intrusive surveys and phased decanting have been critical to managing unknowns in Victorian fabric while keeping parts of the estate operational.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
Related Articles
Related Industries & Products
Construction
Quality control software for construction companies with material testing, batch tracking, and compliance management.
Mining
Geotechnical software solutions for mining operations including CMRR analysis, hydrogeological testing, and data management.
QCDB-io
Comprehensive quality control database for manufacturing, tunnelling, and civil construction with UCS testing, PSD analysis, and grout mix design management.