What and Where Is Nine Elms? Battersea's New Riverside Quarter

Nine Elms is the strip of riverside in the north of Battersea, running along the Thames from Vauxhall towards Battersea Power Station. A little over a decade ago it was mostly industrial land, rail sidings, and a famous derelict building. Today it is one of the largest regeneration zones in Europe, and the single biggest concentration of new-build homes in the area.

If you have seen the towers going up by the river and wondered what the place actually is, this is the story of how it got here, and what it means if you are thinking of buying.

The wider Vauxhall, Nine Elms and Battersea regeneration covers more than 42 building projects and over 20,000 new homes, from riverside penthouses to shared-ownership flats in the same buildings.

From industrial riverside to regeneration zone

For most of the twentieth century, Nine Elms was working land. Rail depots, the power station, and later New Covent Garden Market, which moved here in the 1970s and still trades as London’s largest fruit, vegetable, and flower market.

The Battersea Power Station at the eastern end shut down in 1983. It then stood roofless and derelict for decades, through a run of redevelopment plans that came and went without being built. For a long time it was the most visible symbol of the area’s stalled potential.

The turn came in the 2010s. The whole district, from Vauxhall through Nine Elms to the power station, was designated an opportunity area for large-scale regeneration, anchored by two things: the redevelopment of the power station site, and a brand-new extension of the Underground to serve it.

Battersea Power Station: the centrepiece

The power station site is the heart of it. It is a 42-acre former industrial site, and the listed building sits at its centre. A consortium of Malaysian investors took it on, and around £5 billion has gone into the scheme so far.

It has been built out in phases, which is worth understanding because it explains what you see on the ground today.

• Circus West Village came first, opening in 2017 with 865 homes in the two buildings that frame the approach to the power station.
• The Power Station itself opened in 2022, with 254 apartments inside the restored building, split into the Switch House and Boiler House neighbourhoods. Apple took around 500,000 square feet of the central boiler house as its UK headquarters, moving staff in from 2023.
• Electric Boulevard followed, the new high street between the station and the Tube, with around 744 homes including the Frank Gehry-designed Prospect Place.
• New Mansion Square added 386 affordable homes, delivered with the housing association Peabody.

Across these phases more than 2,200 homes have been delivered, roughly half the eventual neighbourhood. In early 2026 the developer appointed the architects Studio Egret West to re-plan the final 16 acres, replacing the original masterplan drawn up more than fifteen years earlier. Those last phases could add up to 3.2 million square feet more. In short, this is still a building site in places, and will be for years.

The rest of Nine Elms

The power station is the flagship, but the corridor to the west is full of other schemes, most of them apartment towers aimed at the upper end of the market.

Among the named developments are River Park Tower at One Nine Elms, Thames City on the old Nine Elms Square, the Versace-designed DAMAC Tower, London Square Nine Elms, and Prince of Wales Drive along the edge of Battersea Park. At Embassy Gardens, the Ballymore scheme by the US Embassy, the headline is the Sky Pool: a transparent swimming pool suspended 35 metres up between two blocks.

A defining feature of Nine Elms is the mix. Multi-million-pound private flats and subsidised shared-ownership homes often sit in the same development, sometimes the same building.

The Tube that changed everything

None of this would work without transport, and the piece that unlocked it was the Northern line extension.

It opened on 20 September 2021, running from Kennington to two brand-new stations, Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station. Both are in Zone 1 and both are step-free. It cost around £1.1 billion, and it was the first major extension of the Underground since the Jubilee line in 1999, and the first new Northern line stations in eighty years.

The effect was immediate. Transport for London reported that journey times to the City and West End were cut by about half, an average saving of 17 minutes, putting the West End under 15 minutes away. By September 2022 the Battersea Power Station station alone was recording around 80,000 trips a week.

One detail worth knowing: the extension runs on the Charing Cross branch, so for the Bank branch you change at Kennington. There is also a river bus from Battersea Power Station Pier, reaching central London in about 20 minutes.

Parks, shops, and public space

Regeneration on this scale is not only homes. A new linear park runs through the area towards New Covent Garden Market, part of more than 19 acres of new green space across the wider scheme. The power station development alone now has more than 170 shops and restaurants, and the riverside has a public walk along the Thames.

That public realm is a large part of the pitch. It is also what makes the area feel different from an ordinary new-build cluster: it is being built as a destination, not just a set of flats.

What it is like to buy here now

Nine Elms is still maturing as a neighbourhood. Some streets feel finished and lively, others are quiet and surrounded by hoardings. That is the honest picture of a place that is roughly half-built.

Prices start above the London average. As a rough 2026 guide, one-bed flats run around £450,000 to £650,000 and two-beds around £600,000 to £900,000, with the best riverside and penthouse stock far higher.

One cost worth understanding early is the service charge. These are some of the most serviced buildings in London, with concierges, gyms, pools, and landscaped grounds, so the annual charge can be higher than in an older building. It buys genuine convenience and upkeep, so it is worth asking what is included and checking the figure against your budget. The service charge guide explains how it works here.

If a new-build in this area is what you want, the Nine Elms new builds page lists the schemes currently tracked, and the new-build buyer checklist covers the checks worth making before you reserve.

Sources

• Battersea Power Station, Building Battersea: the masterplan (site size, phases, homes delivered, offices, and retail).
• Construction Enquirer, Battersea Power Station masterplan reset for final 16 acres (Studio Egret West appointed to the final phases in 2026).
• Wikipedia and Transport for London, Northern line extension to Battersea (September 2021 opening, two Zone 1 stations, cost, and journey-time savings).