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Simon Jenkins: The death of the conservation area is destroying our skyline

Controversial: a proposed 19-storey building in Praed Street, Paddington, which has been approved by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid but is going to judicial review
Controversial: a proposed 19-storey building in Praed Street, Paddington, which has been approved by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid but is going to judicial review

Should Notting Hill become London’s Catalonia? Is it time to rouse rebellion from the Hillgate hussars and the Ladbroke lancers — as foretold by GK Chesterton in his Napoleon of Notting Hill. For Notting Hill has a real fight on its hands, as have a score of similar hubs across the capital.

This year is the 50th anniversary of the idea of conservation areas, which have done more than anything to preserve London’s liveability and thus prosperity over years of breakneck development. Their progenitor, Duncan Sandys, wanted planning to respect not just individual buildings but the visual character of areas, rich and poor. Thus there are 62 areas in Lambeth, 56 in Westminster and 58 in Tower Hamlets.

These areas have protected the appearance of Chelsea, Notting Hill and Bayswater, as well as Brick Lane, Peckham and New Cross. They have renewed public and private housing without the disruption, clearances and ugly estates of cities elsewhere. They have guarded the city on countless occasions when threatened with destruction.

Not any more. London’s conservation areas have collapsed into absurdity. Those who live in these areas are barely allowed to repaint a front door without pernickety permission. If they try to overlook their neighbours with a new bathroom window, forget it. But if they want to overlook them with a 20-storey tower for Hong Kong investors they will have no problem. The planner hopes for a job with the developer.

Notting Hill’s “downtown” has long been dominated by two squalid Sixties blocks that would discredit a Soviet suburb. The district’s now ageing fashionistas have moved north to (conserved) Westbourne Grove, but Notting Hill’s main road fronts a neighbourhood of cottagey streets and squares of great charm. A developer now wants to replace the southern block with an 18-storey luxury tower of egregious ugliness. It would loom over the entire area — a poke in the eye of residents from Bayswater to Holland Park and Ladbroke Grove. Its intrusion brazenly offends the very idea of a conservation area.

The worry is that Kensington and Chelsea council is so broken-backed by the Grenfell tower disaster that it has given up on these fights. When a developer promises “more housing”, what can it say, especially when a handful of “affordable units” are tossed in as a bribe? The term affordable means “20 per cent cheaper than astronomical” and has nothing to do with genuine social housing for the poor that Kensington badly needs. Housing to Kensington council means gated communities of empty luxury properties, such as the ghostly blocks of Campden Hill and Kensington Road. This is the only borough in south-east England that is actually losing population.

Planning conservation areas is not about uses or occupants, which change over time. It is about massing and intruding, and is for all time. That is why a Paddington developer should not be able to smash up the Praed Street conservation area, demolishing the old baroque sorting office, so as to erect an obscene 19-storey glass cube — in return for a new entrance to the station. Conservation is not about these deals.

Westminster’s decision to abandon its conservation-area philosophy says that, if the money’s good, conservation does not matter. It is sad that this comes from a council whose wealth has, for half a century, been built on meticulous respect for its architectural environment, mostly under the leadership of the late Sir Simon Milton, much-missed.

The Paddington decision was inexplicably approved by the “anti-communities” secretary Sajid Javid. Without so much as giving a reason, he signalled his de facto demolition of the 1957 conservation-area concept, a decision that has, thank goodness, gone to judicial review. The judge may care to look at the declaration of interests of Westminster council members. But it is wrong that judges should have to intervene to protect Londoners from their planners. The planners are supposed to be the protectors.

Cases such as Notting Hill and Paddington can be replicated across the capital. A “landmark 40-storey tower with grey, silver and bronze-coloured metal cladding” is being proposed to soar over the conservation area south of the Old Kent Road at Burgess Park. Another of 32 storeys is proposed as a “gateway” to Lewisham. Another is to loom over Acton. My beloved Camden is under siege on all sides.

I wonder why the Notting Hill developer stopped at 18 storeys — unless someone told him he could overlook anyone’s bedroom window but not Prince William’s in Kensington Palace. In every case I have come across, the developer promises “much-needed homes for Londoners”, and then flogs them in Malaysia.

None of the tower blocks on the Thames adds to London’s residential stock. They are financial laundromats in the sky

Simon Jenkins

London is the only city in Europe with no control on the appearance of its horizon. You can build any height you want. The mayoralties of Ken Livingstone and Boris Johnson left a skyline that draws gasps of horror from every foreign visitor I show round. The visual rape of the Thames continues apace, with a monster south of Blackfriars Bridge, bulging in its middle like an anaconda swallowing a horse, to maximise lettable floor area. None of these towers adds to London’s residential stock. They are financial laundromats in the sky.

There is no argument that London has exceptionally low housing densities, both in persons per room and in houses per acre. But that should mean incentives to downsizing, by slashing stamp duty and ramping up council tax. It should encourage renting. It should also mean extra space, without Londoners having to sprawl over the green belt and using time and energy getting to work. There is nothing wrong in replicating the high densities of the Victorian streets of Pimlico and Wapping, or in developing the myriad backlands and mews that occupy much of London’s land area. Empty towers are nothing to do with the case.

If Londoners are not to be consulted on the overall appearance of their city, they can at least wax angry over local outrages. Notting Hill needs its Napoleons, and Paddington its bears.