• FOR three years developers have been endeavouring to redevelop Selkirk House for a zonking speculative 76 metre-high office block right in the heart of Bloomsbury.

The developers have recently submitted their third planning application and this time they are supremely confident that they will get the full support of Camden’s planners.

The developers and the architects DSDHA have chosen not to take the opportunity of the recent listing protection given to five properties within their development site, to reconsider their whole proposal but continue with their stance of refusing to consult the local community and amenity societies, ignoring local and national heritage bodies and their criticisms, and pressing ahead with their hideous and damaging office block that flies in the face of all conservation, listed building planning policies.

The latest scheme contains minimal changes and the development is completely contrary the Greater London Authority’s and Camden Council’s statements about climate emergency with the aim to reach carbon zero by 2030. The development does quite the opposite and embarks on a high-carbon strategy of demolishing reusable buildings capable of a low-carbon retrofit.

The motivation behind the development is deeply depressing especially as Camden planners appear to be moved by the glamour of a new development and the monies they will accrue by way of Community Infrastructure Levy (CiL) and business rates… indeed to all appearances the Camden planners seem willing to sell the special historic quality of the Bloomsbury and Covent Garden areas for a short-term cash payment and are tying themselves in knots trying to “prove” that their planning policies do not mean what they say, indeed quite the opposite.

The developers have been forced to make changes as a consequence of the listing but they go no way far enough as they still propose to demolish a very historic stable block two-storeys high designed by Fitzroy Doll that even Camden’s Conservation Area Statement highlights as contributing to the quality of the conservation area and replacing it with a very inappropriate six-storey block that will compound the terrible daylight and sunlight problems that the tower block will cause to the protected residential building so much so that the majority of the habitable rooms will require artificial light all day everyday of the year.

What is more the rear elevations of all the listed buildings are to be abused with deck access walkways and blocked-up original window openings to facilitate a so called play deck that will enjoy the shadow of the tower block and no sunshine.

Difficult to find a more crude design and lack of concern to the conditions of tenants who will occupy the social housing that the developers are offering.

If there ever was a case of a development causing substantial damage to an area this is it; the scheme in effect puts two fingers up at the plethora of listed buildings that are within and surround the site, not least the Grade I-listed British Museum, Bedford Square and Nicholas Hawksmoor’s St George’s church.

Save Museum Street Campaign call on all Londoners to record their disgust to this terrible development, by recording their objection to the scheme with Camden Council urgently and make a stand against the surge of crude developments that are disfiguring London. Write to Camden planners planning@camden.gov.uk quoting references 2023/2510/P and 2023/2510/L

It might be lost on the developers that if they had pursued a retrofit approach from the outset they would have completed their development by now. But their greed and zeal to construct a further 250,000 sq ft office tower when there is well over 130 million square feet of empty office space in London blinds them to the obvious.

The trouble is their ignorance will very significantly damage the Bloomsbury and Covent Garden neighbourhoods and the damage will be irreparable.

JIM MONAHAN
Save Museum Street Coalition