Breaking News -Secretary of State calls Public Inquiry – 11th June 2020
Local people called on the Secretary of State Rt Hon Robert Jenrick MP to call in the planning application for 8 Albert Embankment – to give it the proper scrutiny of a public inquiry.
Today we can announce that he has heard the call, done the right thing – called it in!
Michael Ball of the Waterloo Community Development Group says: “It is criminal that these central London sites have been left mostly vacant for 20 years in public ownership, yet all successive Mayors can do is back schemes helicoptered in and completely out-of-scale or context, and of little use to London or Londoners, in order to try and make big bucks like the most rapacious of developers.
“Real people living in real social housing will lose up to 40 per cent of their daylight, because of safety-deposit boxes posing as housing piled 90 metres high beside them.”
Helen Perrault-Newby of the Whitgift Estate Tenants and Residents Association says:
“Social Housing tenants on our estate are to be condemned to live without adequate daylight so the London Mayor can make the biggest fat profit, by not following the planning policy design principles for this site. THIS IS WRONG.
It’s a fact, those impacted most are black people, pandemic key workers, children and disabled residents. It’s time for some respect.”
Paul Ettlinger of the 9 Albert Embankment Residents Association says:
“This development totally disregards the heritage of a site with 2 grade 2 listed buildings, the only ones surviving from the 1930s on the South Bank and in the setting of Lambeth Palace and the Westminster World Heritage Site.
Even the London Mayors officers raised concern at the desecration of 8 Albert Embankment, the London Fire Brigade HQ with a double height glass roof extension and wrap around hotel with some 200 rooms.
This is a heritage site and Lambeth’s own local policy dictates it should be protected, yet this planning application was agreed by the borough on the casting vote of it’s Chair of Planning. Fortunately the Secretary of State Rt Hon Robert Jenrick has seen fit to call the application in citing heritage grounds as one of the primary reasons.”
From our local councillors blog here
As ward councillors we have been determined to oppose this development believing it to be out of scale for the site. It will now be subject to a public enquiry. We support having an enquiry and will be giving evidence.
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