Arts Council pledges £7 million for Rambert Dance Company’s South Bank HQ

The ballet company had already raised more than £10 million of the £19.6 million it is seeking for the new dance centre on the South Bank.

Five years ago Coin Street Community Builders announced that it was giving Chiswick-based Rambert a small plot of land on its Doon Street site.

The dance HQ – designed by Allies and Morrison – will be sandwiched between Coin Street's proposed leisure centre, office and residential development designed by Lifschutz Davidson Sandilands.

Last summer it emerged that Rambert's headquarters could be built independently of the stalled skyscraper scheme for the adjacent site.

"The news from Arts Council England provides a high degree of certainty for our plans as we seek to raise the final amount needed to complete our campaign," said a spokesperson for Rambert.

"We hope to start building on site in spring 2011 and move in spring 2013."

The Arts Council claims that the project will enable it to explore how organisations can lever in significant levels of private funds while working with the Arts Council as the sole public investor. It says that "learning from the project will be invaluable at a time of severely reduced public funding".

The Doon Street car park site is currently hosting La Soiree cabaret show in the South Bank Big Top.