Tall & Urban News

UK Housing secretary Robert Jenrick has granted permission to PLP Architecture’s £1 billion (US$1.3 billion) Westferry Printworks scheme, despite its being criticized by experts, including his own planning inspector.

The scheme is for the media tycoon-turned-property developer Richard Desmond, who now has permission to build a 1,524-home community with shops, banks, bars, offices, and restaurants on the Isle of Dogs site in east London.

The scheme includes five stepped towers, with the largest standing at 44 stories, which will provide a total of 282 affordable homes alongside market-price housing.

Desmond launched an appeal for the scheme in April 2019 following Tower Hamlets Council’s non-determination of his application. A month later the council voted to reject the scheme, which was also opposed by neighboring Greenwich Council as well as the Greater London Authority (GLA).

An earlier proposal for the site, also by PLP, featured just 772 homes and was given planning permission by Boris Johnson in his last week as Mayor of London in May 2016.

Following a 12-day planning inquiry in August and September 2019, veteran planning inspector David Prentis published a 141-page report which heavily criticized the latest designs. Prentis advised Jenrick not to give the scheme planning permission.

Prentis said it would “fail to preserve” the setting of Tower Bridge, the Grade I-listed Old Royal Naval College, and the Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site. It would “be harmful to the character and appearance of the area." It would “be harmful to the recreational use of Millwall Outer Dock for sailing,” due to its effect on the microclimate and wind turbulence. It would “not provide the maximum reasonable amount of affordable housing.” Lastly, that conflicts with the local development plan “are of such significance that the proposal should be regarded as being in conflict with the development plan as a whole.”

In its submission to Prentis, the GLA added that “insufficient attention has been paid to any factor other than seeking to maximize the amount of market housing in the scheme.” It also said that one of the key factors ignored in the “overweening ambition” of the applicant was “making good places for people to live in.”

Tower Hamlets also slated the scheme in its submission to Prentis, saying the scheme “breached virtually all the design principles identified in the development plan.”

But in a letter sent the week of 13 January 2020 to planning consultant DP9, which is working with PLP and Desmond, a spokesperson for Jenrick said the Housing Secretary “disagrees with the inspector’s conclusions and disagrees with his recommendation.”

While Jenrick agreed with many of the points raised by Prentis, the spokesperson said, he found that “the identified harms when taken together are outweighed by the benefits of the proposal in terms of additional housing units (compared to the earlier consented scheme) and additional employment during construction.”

For more on this story, go to Architects’ Journal.