Barbican residents slam 10-storey luxury flat development on old police block site

Writers living in the Barbican claim plans to demolish a former police accommodation block to make way for 99 luxury flats are “disgraceful”.

More than 180 neighbours have objected to a proposal by Taylor Wimpey to knock down Bernard Morgan House in Golden Lane.

They claim the development, which would rise to 10 storeys and include no affordable housing, should be blocked when it comes before the City of London Corporation’s planning committee tomorrow. Officers have recommended the plans for approval.

Fifties-built Bernard Morgan House served as a police section house until it was decommissioned after the 2011 Winsor review into police spending. It has been vacant since 2015.

A consultation on the redevelopment prompted a series of objections, including from novelist and filmmaker Chris Petit and writer Diana Souhami.

Mr Petit, who directed 1979 road movie Radio On, said: “Their plans manage the extraordinary feat of being simultaneously slavish, dull, timid and offensive. It would be a disgrace to the City, its skyline, its planners, its location and the architects involved.

“Both the Barbican and the Golden Lane Estate developed out of history. The plan to redevelop Bernard Morgan House has no awareness of anything other than its own steroidal bulk.”

Taylor Wimpey wants to build 41 one-bedroom, 38 two-bedroom, and 10 three-bedroom flats on the site. It has agreed to pay £4.5 million to the local authority in lieu of providing affordable housing there.

Souhami, who won the 2001 Whitbread Biography Award for Selkirk’s Island, said: “This is a cynical development and should not be approved.

“I live in the Barbican. From my windows I view the destruction of the City as an affordable place to live and its transformation into a money-making dystopia of office blocks and property portfolios.” The Twentieth Century Society said the loss of Bernard Morgan House would harm “the character of an area that is defined by its high calibre post-war architecture”.

But Richard Smith, of Taylor Wimpey Central London, said: “Following consultation, we have made a number of changes to the scheme, including reducing the massing and height of the development and reducing the number of homes on the site.” He added that the contribution to affordable housing was “considerable”.