Last Chance To Save Liverpool St Station From The Monster Block
Behold, the twenty storey office block that Network Rail wants to plonk on top of Liverpool St Station. Note the height of Grade II*-listed Great Eastern Hotel in front and observe that this pile is more than twice the height. No amount of terraces with greenery can conceal the bulk of this monster which will block out daylight from the concourse.
Many readers wrote objecting to the first version of this scheme but now there is this new version all those objections have been discarded. If you want to stop this new offence, please write a new objection before 4th July.
You may have seen adverts on social media encouraging people to support improving access and toilets at Liverpool St Station, which lead through to an online form to register support for the new development. Yet it is Network Rail’s responsibility to provide proper access and toilets, and these adverts barely mention the twenty-storey block they want to build.
Unfortunately, the developers have garnered 613 messages of support against 180 objections so far, which is why your objection is imperative.
Please forward this post, and encourage your friends and family to object too.
HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY
You can object in writing online, by email or by letter.
More than one person can object in any household and anyone can object wherever you are in the world but you must include your postal address.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER YOUR OBJECTION ONLINE
If you are objecting by email or letter, address your objection to Tom Sleigh, Chair of the Planning & Transport Committee and quote Planning Application 25/00494/FULEIA.
Say in the opening line of your objection ‘I object’ and if you submit your objection online you must also click the button that indicates you ‘object.’
We suggest the following opening line:
“I object to this application which would cause substantial harm to the significance of nationally important heritage assets. More specifically, I raise objections to:”
Follow in your own words with these legal points for objection.
POINTS FOR OBJECTION
- The substantial harm to the Grade II-listed station through the demolition of the roof of the concourse and its replacement with a new structure, which would also compromise the setting of the 19th century train shed.
- The insertion of large amounts of new retail units in the 19th century train sheds, including the construction of two elevated retail galleries, causing a high level of harm to the special interest and significance of the Grade II-listed heritage asset.
- The impact to the setting of surrounding listed heritage assets. In particular, harm to the significance of the Grade II*-listed hotel – the last continually functioning 19th century hotel in the City – through the construction of a twenty-storey tower over the station concourse.
- The substantial harm the scheme would cause to the Bishopsgate Conservation Area by the imposition of a tall building in an area characterised by low-and medium-scale buildings. This is contrary to the 2015 City Plan which requires the refusal of planning permission for tall buildings in inappropriate areas, such as in Conservation Areas and the St. Paul’s Cathedral Heights area. In addition, the scheme would impact on the setting of numerous designated and undesignated heritage assets in the City and beyond, such as many of the Grade I-listed Christopher Wren City churches and nearby St Botolph’s church.
- Be sure to reference the National Planning Policy Framework, otherwise your objection may be dismissed. Paragraph NPPF 213 states: “Substantial harm to or loss of: a) grade II listed buildings, or grade II registered parks or gardens, should be exceptional.”
YOU CAN SEND IT BY EMAIL
plncomments@cityoflondon.gov.uk;tom.sleigh@cityoflondon.gov.uk
cc:
shravan.joshi@cityoflondon.gov.uk; shravan.tana.adkin@cityoflondon.gov.uk; joshi@cityoflondon.gov.uk; samapti.bagchi@cityoflondon.gov.uk; matthew.bell@cityoflondon.gov.uk; emily.benn@cityoflondon.gov.uk; john.edwards@cityoflondon.gov.uk; anthony.fitzpatrick@cityoflondon.gov.uk; marianne.fredericks@cityoflondon.gov.uk; alison.gowman@cityoflondon.gov.uk; prem.goyal@cityoflondon.gov.uk; madush.gupta@cityoflondon.gov.uk; josephine.hayes@cityoflondon.gov.uk; jaspreet.hodgson@cityoflondon.gov.uk; amy.horscroft@cityoflondon.gov.uk; philip.kelvin@cityoflondon.gov.uk; elizabeth.king@cityoflondon.gov.uk; edward.lord@cityoflondon.gov.uk; antony.manchester@cityoflondon.gov.uk; alastair.moss@cityoflondon.gov.uk; deborah.oliver@cityoflondon.gov.uk; henry.pollard@cityoflondon.gov.uk; simon.pryke@cityoflondon.gov.uk; nighat.qureishi@cityoflondon.gov.uk; gaby.robertshaw2@cityoflondon.gov.uk; hugh.selka@cityoflondon.gov.uk; alethea.silk@cityoflondon.gov.uk; naresh.sonpar@cityoflondon.gov.uk; william.upton@cityoflondon.gov.uk; matthew.waters@cityoflondon.gov.uk; jacqui.webster@cityoflondon.gov.uk
YOU CAN SEND IT BY POST
Planning Department,
City of London Corporation,
Guildhall, PO Box 270,
London, EC2P 2EJ.
At the public consultation for the first Liverpool St Station scheme only the lower half of the model was shown
Sir John Betjeman led the campaign to save Liverpool St Station in the last century. Photograph by David Sim c.1961
Thank you for again drawing attention to this terrible scheme.
It should be viewed as from a passenger .All the improvements such as lifts for disabled access should be carried out , as all the support letters suggest, but that does not mean you also have to turn our station into the foundations for a massive office block. No natural light as now over the concourse, and it will take 8 years of horrific disruption to build.
And at the end ,looking at the artists impressions , it will be like entering an Eastern European Salt Mine ,instead of the present inspiring airy concourse.
Martin Lightfoot.Platforms 9 and 10 Porter, summer 1956
I will recycle & amend my previous objection!
You can stick your gentrified metropolis where the sun don’t shine!
I visited there yesterday and it gave me a mixture of emotions .
The Kindertransport statue sadness and love for the cause to save them .
This was once my safe place where I could sit at night and wrote my poems . Gone .
I put in my complaint before about the station changes but will do so again .
This monster building is an absurdity. How can you realise something like this? — What I don’t understand: Prince Charles had always campaigned against the tower block madness in London. Why is King Charles III no longer doing that?
Love & Peace
ACHIM
I have registered my objection. For some reason, when I tried to do this online, the server refused to accept, so I did it by email and included my address.
Thanks for providing all the useful points. I really hope these objections will make a difference to station which already combines modernity with fabulous Victorian features of the Industrial Age.
The size of the proposed building is ludicrous and should not be being presented as the pay off for improved disabled access. And I say this as a person who has recently suffered mobility issues. These things should not be mutually exclusive and fur the developers to mislead in this way is quite shameful.
Here’s to victory and sympathetic planning in our wonderful Capital and every other UK town and city.
Objection submitted again – no doubt the developers will keep coming back with adjustments until they get away with something only semi-monstrous.
Keep resisting!
Thank you GA
Hello all,
I have just posted my objection. Thank you for drawing ‘our’ attention to it.
I just cannot see why more office space is needed. There are already empty offices all over London – and how many retail units are already sitting empty in that area alone.
I am no expert, but I wonder if it is worth posting this on one of the petition sites? Change.org etc etc, to widen the message.
Just whilst writing, the whole proceedure seems to be designed to discourage people from objecting – the langauage in that ‘Planning Proposal’ is so dense. I am all for nuance, current populism wants to dumb everything down to simple solutions, but it does seem to me that the Planning Proposal requires those who object to be ‘expert’ in planning law, and therefore – but for the very helpful objections outlined in the email I was sent – reducing the potential number of people who might object, just on the basis that it is ugly and we don’t need it, which while simplistic are valid.
Thanks for drawing my attention to this.
Martin
Thanks for sharing this information. I’ve just registered my objection. All power to resistance!
I have emailed and submitted on line 🤞
FYI…some od those cc’d emails boinced back
Rob
NO to the disfigurement of London’s dignified architectural past – Hands off Liverpool Street Station! we don’t need another 20 story empty office block (+shopping mall) overshadowing our city & darkening our doors..
Have just objected as follows. Many thanks GA for your perseverance and campaigning.
I object strongly to this appalling, inappropriate and unnecessary application which would substantially harm the existing significant architectural and functional features of Liverpool St station. The development is against the National Planning Policy Framework paragraph NPPF 213 which states: “Substantial harm to or loss of: a) grade II listed buildings, or grade II registered parks or gardens, should be exceptional.”
The scheme would cause substantial harm to the Bishopsgate Conservation Area by imposing a tall building in an area characterised by low-and medium-scale buildings – in other words it is completely inappropriate to the area. This is contrary to the 2015 City Plan which requires the refusal of planning permission for tall buildings in inappropriate areas, such as in Conservation Areas and the St. Paul’s Cathedral Heights area. In addition, the scheme would affect the setting of numerous designated and undesignated heritage assets in the City and beyond, such as many of the Grade I-listed Christopher Wren City churches and nearby St Botolph’s church.
London is being wrecked by far too many high-rise developments, and it has become a free-for-all where almost anything is now approved regardless of sympathy with existing structures and communities. There is no regard to architectural beauty – this scheme is just a large cuboid block with no artistic merit.
Building by building, older and beautiful sites in London are being destroyed and replaced with soul-less monstrosities that break the essential connection between people and their surroundings through excessive scale and ugly design.
I too have travelled to Liverpool Street all my life.
I often liken it to a history of my own life. Liverpool Street could be remodelled in a sympathetic way like St Pancras to preserve it’d heritage and character.
Where is John Betjeman now when we need him?
This is the most vile, unsympathetic developement of Liverpool Street Station and despoils the environs of this Victorian masterpiece. The proposed structure takes no account of this and shadows… dominates the surrounding historical footprint that shows us and future generations London’s evolution via it’s buildings.
This glass ‘thing’ looks to have been modelled on the dystopian nightmare of the ‘Blade Runner’ (film) set… it completely envelopes the station, clashed with its Victorian intricates and grandeur, thereby removing so much of the area’s architectural heritage and lineage.
As a regular user of the station for half a century (58yrs) it further perpetuates the commercialisation of the station which presently sacrifices the fast efficient movement of travellers for the retail footfall that they seemingly provide. The station concourse is utterly chaotic at peak times, so much so one wonders about the safety aspects of evacuating these vast numbers of people if there was an emergency situation. Have the Developers forgotten 7/7 this monsterous carbuncle would be a prime target, all that glass is weaponised and then becomes shrapnel?
It fails me once again why we need more of this type of building. The high rise around this area has not enhanced anything. Being a Londoner, it has taken something away from our lives. We loose a quality of life that low rise and small development give. So this project needs to be stoped and rethought.
I have sent in my letter of objection which sounds far more reasoned than how I actually feel which is basically ‘whaaaaaaat??!!’