London apartment block that deviates from plans must be torn down, says council
London apartment block that deviates from plans must be torn down, says council
‘Blight on the landscape’ in Greenwich lacks promised gardens, children’s play areas and accessibility for wheelchair users
What a waste. Although considering the amount of corner cutting on the building’s appearance and features, I’m not sure I’d trust the structural integrity either.
The apartments are occupied too so demolishing them is could leave people homeless.
I would hope lessons will be learned from this, plenty more rogue developments could slip through if we are ever going to ramp up house building to the needed levels without proper oversight.
While it is a waste, it is necessary not to let things like that slip. They built something they did not have a permission for, as simple as that. Just like when you decide to expand your home with an annex without a permit.
They got permission to build a house based on plans A, and actually built a house based on plans B. And by the looks of it, we are not talking about the building being 5cm to wide in one direction (which had led to a tear down order here in one case), but quite a number of massive violations.
Luckily it's a buy to rent building so the residents are only on tenancies and can leave easily, they aren't stuck with long term leases on worthless flats like those who brought ones in cladded buildings.
If I was one of them though, I'd be trying to get the developers to pay for my moving costs.
Absolutely. I'm fully on board with them demolishing it, but they should also be liable for all costs involved with the tennants along with compensation for the additional time and effort required in the tennants part. The developers need to be held accountable for every aspect of this, not just their own costs in the demo/rebuild.
A fun game of spot the difference, but apparently there's more going on that you can't see -- eg the planned underground carpark just not being built at all, and them building a carpark over the garden instead.
I mean, the missing car part should have been obvious from the day the foundations went in...
In general agreement though, it looks like they cut a lot of corners from the original application. Should have been flagged sooner though.
I don't know anything about planning / building, but does the planning office not inspect sites periodically to make sure the plans are being followed?
Well
only one in 10 council planning departments are fully staffed, with 13% operating with fewer than three-quarters of posts filled
with
80% [of local authorities] reporting they did not have enough officers to carry out their workload
because
long-term cuts to funding have had a visible impact on planning departments’ ability to retain staff... there has been a 43% fall in resources to the planning system from local authorities since 2009-10.
Well, if not properly staffed, hopefully full demolition will act as an effective self-enforced compliance to other builders in the future.
If hiring a good architect that knows the regulations well, then there shouldn't be much need for deviation from the original plans. I understand some deviations may happen, but that is when you should be in contact with the local planning department to remedy and get approval for minor changes (shouldn't be anything quite this drastic of a difference though).
Send in Dibnah!
Did you like that?
I did, actually 😅
If only.
I don't know what it is that makes him so charming and affable.
Maybe it's that he's so down to earth and sentimental? A reminder of a simpler time, himself pining for a long gone past too?
Maybe he's relatable because he also probably has ADHD?
Obligatory:
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Extra sharp highlights, implausibly blue skies and deeper colours are all part of the dark arts of the computer-generated rendering.
But the gulf between what was proposed for an apartment complex rising 23 storeys above the Thames in south-east London and what was actually built has finally proved too much.
The visualisations before planning permission was granted over a decade ago showed a standard piece of contemporary residential architecture with details intended to render an otherwise blocky project easier on the eye.
Asked why it did not act sooner, Greenwich said it was not until 2022, when building work was finally finished, that it became clear that the breaches to the planning permission were more than just external.
“The council believes that the only reasonable and proportionate way to rectify the harm created by the finished Mast Quay Phase II development to the local area, and the tenants living there, because of the changes made during its construction, is the complete demolition and the restoration of the land to its former condition.”
Greenwich’s statement said the developer had argued that it needed to make changes to the originally permitted design owing to alterations to the building regulation.
The original article contains 621 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
People get outraged about wasting a fine building. But do you have any idea how much effort it takes to make a good plan?
Well, they had a good plan that they got permission for to build. It is not the council's fault that they actually built something else.
My northern town can't even afford to rebuild the broken down ill-repair buildings it already has and London are building them to tear them down, even if they went off plan they could be fined instead of spending more by pulling it all down. What a waste.
"London" didn't build these, a developer did. That developer cut a lot of corners and so now there is the very valid question of how many more were cut that we just can't see. Structural integrity is in doubt and so these buildings cannot be deemed safe.
Fines are just seen as a cost of business by some people so this tear-down-and-rebuild-properly consequence is the only thing that will make them finally start to play by the rules.
Maybe be thankful that your northern town doesn't have shysters with money signs in their eyes looking to fleece the locals eh.