Tall buildings in the Borough: Cllr Martin Elengorn sets the record straight

6.28.00pm GMT Sat 15th Nov 2008

Regal House - a Tory tall building!

• [Nov 14]: Cllr Martin Elengorn, Cabinet Member for Environment writes: 'CLLR Nicholas True [Conservative] has published a grotesque and irresponsible misrepresentation of the Council's policy on tall buildings.

Far from encouraging out-of-character tall buildings the Council is working towards the most restrictive policy towards tall buildings of any London borough. Cllr True alleges that the Council has changed existing policy on tall buildings. In fact the Secretary of State deleted it from the 2005 UDP earlier this year against the Council's express wishes. From 2008 our UDP policies can only be "saved" (pending the new Local Development Framework in 2010 or 2011) if the Government permits this. The Secretary of State permitted almost every 2005 policy to be saved in this way but, against the Council's wishes, deleted the tall buildings policy on the grounds that it was in conflict with more recent Government guidance and the Mayor's February 2008 London Plan.

The advice from English Heritage and others was that the Council could only restore a restrictive policy towards tall buildings in the new Local Development Framework by commissioning a special study to provide firm objective evidence to demonstrate the general unsuitability of the borough for tall buildings. The discarded 2005 policy, which merely asserted without evidence a lack of suitability for tall buildings, would not have withstood challenge. The study by Turley Associates on the other hand by careful townscape analysis demonstrated that only two locations in the borough were generally suitable for tall buildings (i) Richmond station and (ii) Twickenham station and nearby sites. All other parts of the borough were judged to be, prima facie, unsuitable for taller buildings.

It is therefore nonsense to allege that Richmond is threatened by "many more" taller buildings under a Lib Dem Council. On the contrary nearly every tall building in the borough was erected in the 1960s and 1970s by Conservative Councils; two were even named after Conservative Councillors! We are determined to preserve the character of the borough and the Tories are insulting the public's intelligence by pretending otherwise.'

Related Link:

• Borough-wide Sustainable Urban Development Study