Plans for one of London’s tallest skyscrapers scrapped before council could reject scheme
Plans to fling up one of London’s tallest residential skyscrapers in the Docklands were pre-emptively pulled just hours before Tower Hamlets Council was set to refuse planning permission.
Developers Cubitt Property Holdings withdrew their proposals for a 54-storey, 611-foot tower at 225 Marsh Wall, which had the support of former London mayor Boris Johnson.
The council’s strategic planning committee was expected to refuse planning permission for the tower at a meeting of its strategic planning committee on 14 June.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who can overrule the council, was then set to make the final decision, which would have given an early indication of his plans for the London skyline.
Aman Dalvi, Tower Hamlets Council’s director of development and renewal, said that the scheme sought to “maximise – not optimise – the development potential of the site”.
In a report given to the council’s strategic planning committee, Mr Dalvi said that 221 out of 414 residential units were either studios or one-bedroom flats, an “over-provision of one bed units” as well as an “under provision of family-sized homes (more than three beds)”.
Mr Dalvi was also concerned there would be “deficiencies in housing quality standards” due to a lack of public space, children’s play areas and natural light, and that the 54 storey tower would “unacceptably” overshadow nearby buildings.
The developer had offered to make 24 per cent of the housing affordable, but this was 11 per cent short of the borough’s target.
The plans for 225 Marsh Wall, which is currently occupied by a four-storey office block, also included screening rooms and a gym for residents, and offices and shops on the lower floors.
Cubitt Property Holdings were not available for comment.
This is a very “interesting” item, in that it actually gives credit (is that due?) to a named employee of the Council for what appears to be a piece of positive spin for the regime at Tower Hamlets Council.
What could be the reason for Tower Hamlets Council spinning this one as they have done?
The evidence of the past 30 years plus of Tower Hamlets Council’s collusion with Big Biz and the big building programmes is that most of the Council’s “refusals” have been followed by “granting” of “planning consent” after the speculators (mis-named “developers”) colluded with the de facto bribery scheme which included a number of tick-boxes that were inserted to mislead the public into thinking that Tower Hamlets Council “extracted” “social” input by the scam-applicants.
That is why the entire skyline in the Aldgate East parts, from the Commercial Road/Alie Street/Leman Street to the junction with Commercial Street is overshadowed by very high buildings that have been blocking the skyline out of view from the ground; the same has been happening along the route stretching to Cable Street and further south; and on the actual Isle of Dogs (mis-called “Docklands” thus deleting the historic traditional names for the parts of the Borough that are now the sites of the Big Biz Big Builders’ Assaults) the Council-planned attack on the part of Society has been against everything Social, Environmental and Local.
The reference to Sadiq Khan in the piece is also out of context as it fails to give the full picture of what the previous two incumbents had done to the “skyline” and the Social
map of the Isle of Dogs and the rest of Tower Hamlets, including the parts adjoining the Borough of Newham towards and near the 2012 Games venue. And the historic waterways.
Tower Hamlets has been operating the scam to let Big Buildings to rise all over the place while running the Social Cleansing agenda that has been allowed to happen by decades of Silence by elected Councillors.
That has been happening for at least 15 years BEFORE the foisting of “executive mayors” under the Tony Bliar Degeneration of Democracy.
Without these facts and factors being included in reports about a single, token “rejection”, the truth of the destructions of the East End by planned deception done via the local Council is not being told.
The Truth must be told and the Degeneration programme must be stopped, reversed and Social Agenda for the whole of London must be commenced.
“Planning” staff in Tower Hamlets Council do not support the Social Agenda.
They operate a tokenistic agenda just so that they can give the impression of bothering for the Social agenda.
This is no accident.
It is the same Council which carried out the biggest Social Cleansing Attack by transferring Council Housing Stock ten years ago to collections of anti-Social operatives trading at the time under front names that had the misleading intention to suggest they were “social”.
All those outfits are now allowed to trade in effect as capitalist ones with the ideas and ideas of a Democratic local Council are totally absent.
Yet Tower Hamlets Council had promised that post-transfer, the tenants and residents would enjoy the “same” rights and the same social say that had been the normally expected entitlements under a Council-owned and Council-controlled housing settlement for decades.
All the promises vanished.
Most of that transferred stock is being abused by profiteering or anti-Social aims, not for Social housing but for profit-generating aims.
Regardless of the token numbers of “family’ sized and “children-friendly’ units that
the Aman Dalvi-linked reports “refers to”, most of the rest of the dame “directorate”
has been serving the agenda of those who DENY the local Community the basic HOUSING rights.
That has been THE BIGGEST scandal done by Tower Hamlets Council so far as Council and Social housing is concerned.
The words Council and Social have been replaced by the market an d profiteering term “affordable”.
As I have pointed out before, there was no Democratic INPUT IN ANY FO THE CHANNEL 4 SERIES THAT actually sought to justify Social Cleansing via Tower Hamlets Council.
Channel 4 also trailed their two series (2013 and 2014) PROMOTING Social Cleansing, by peddling the then Chief executive Kevan Collins in July 2010 when they aired “UNDERCOVER BOSS”, an episode that was slammed even by the normally staid Financial Times as being “Undercover Fluff”, devoid of content and manifestly hypocritical.
The FT pointed out that Kevan Collins was on a salary of £177,000 at the time when he mouthed false “concerns” for the “deprived Tower Hamlets” (already by July 2010) being overshadowed by and existing under the spreading skyscrapers of Canary Wharf!
The FT item is still accessible online
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/92ab6014-94f0-11df-af3b-00144feab49a.html#axzz4Cx13atKt
That trend has continued over the past six years.
That must be stopped.
With all the implications.
Community, Council, Social, Democratic, Environmental must be restored, reinstated and protected in Tower Hamlets.
The present Council will not do any of that.
Can Sadiq Khan do it?
He can only do it if he first actively stops the trends created under Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson and then starts working with Community campaigns across the East End and the rest of London.