Artist’s impression

AN ice skate rink and bar will be set up in a Mayfair square this Christmas.

The Skate West End in Hanover Square will also raise funds for research into paediatric brain tum-ours at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for sick children.

Mayfair community groups had objected to the plan, saying it could end up breaking conservation area regulations.

City councillors voted five-to-one to approve it at a meeting on Tuesday.

Labour West End ward councillor Paul Fisher said: “I’m certainly no Scrooge; I love Christmas, but you can’t use that to shame me into voting for an application that we have not been granted sufficient evidence to prove is in compliance with an act of parliament.”

He was concerned the council hadn’t sought enough advice on whether the project breached a 1931 law governing the use of squares in London.

Cllr Fisher, who called the design of the ice rink “tacky”, added: “That is not sufficient.
We need to be given clear legal advice about acts like this because it is no longer about planning policy, it is about our duty to act under statute. I don’t think the committee has been given sufficient justification for the interpretation provided and I suggest that might be the reason why, in Westminster, we see the commercialisation of our public spaces.”

Tory councillor Jim Glen said the planning committee had to judge applications based on council policy.

Organisers Underbelly has got permission for a year, when the decision will be reviewed, the committee agreed.

Mike Dunn, representing the Residents’ Society of Mayfair and St James’s, questioned the decision to grant permission temporarily.

He said: “You’re travelling up the motorway for an urgent meeting. At one of the junctions, there is a hold-up and the traffic flow is slow. You get behind schedule. So, for 10 miles, you decide to travel at 90 miles an hour in order to make up time. The police stop you and your defence is: ‘Well, I was only doing it for a temporary time.’ Will that get you off? In your dreams. Well, that is the essence of this application.”

The meeting had heard concerns that the London Squares Preservation Act 1931, which allows public squares in the capital to be transformed into “pleasure grounds”, was being misinterpreted.

Planning chair Ruth Bush said the city council should seek better legal advice in the future.

Edward Bartlam, an Underbelly director, said some of the money raised from ticket sales will go to helping Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) research aggressive brain tumours which, he said, killed his seven-year-old son in 2019. He said: “He was looked after by the amazing staff at GOSH and there is no better place to raise the money for.”

The Underbelly director also said the project would be a new cultural attraction for shoppers, bring in jobs, and he vowed to hand out free and discounted tickets for local school and community groups as well as GOSH patients and staff.

After the hearing, Sarah Bissell, a director at the hospital, said money raised will help fund the hospital’s urgent needs, “including vital research into brain tumours in children”.