This should not be normal for Norwich
LAST month, after a six-hour discussion and by a margin of seven votes to five, Norwich City Council planning committee gave permission for the £271 million mixed-use redevelopment of Anglia Square. Athena, who has already signalled her strong disapproval of the project (September 19, 2018), was dismayed by the news.
The proposal, which promises to overshadow the heart of Norwich, involves the construction of a 20-storey tower (reduced from an original 25) and further blocks of 4–12 storeys inside the citycentre conservation area. The developer, Weston Homes with landowner Columbia Threadneedle, expects the project to take between five and eight years to realise and that it will deliver 1.2 million square feet of new floor space, including some 1,234 homes and a 200-room hotel.
The decision to press forward with this scheme shows that the majority of the planning committee is prepared to swallow shockingly intrusive and damaging physical change in return for mere promises of future economic benefits.
Not only that, but the same councillors have looked straight through the qualities that make their city centre—a place that should be their pride and care—special. They have done so, moreover, in the teeth of opposition from Historic England, as well as the informed objections of bodies such as SAVE Britain’s Heritage, not to mention hundreds of private individuals.
This is not only an intellectual and intuitive failure of understanding, it shows a lack of confidence and imagination to seek appropriate alternative redevelopment of the ring road (as Athena has outlined).
Were it not for Brexit, Athena would be confident that this scheme would receive the public scrutiny it deserves and that it would be called in by the Secretary of State and subject to a public enquiry.
Setting aside the recent experience of the capital, where a mania for tall buildings has created legions of tower blocks without any aspiration to architectural quality at all, Norwich establishes new standards of disregard for the planning principles that should be applied within a conservation area. The national consequences of such a precedent would be very damaging indeed.
In the present political circumstances, however, it’s hard to be confident of anything. Subsequent to the landmark legal case won by SAVE in October, the Secretary of State must at least now observe published Government policy and give reasons as to why planning decisions are not called in (rather than maintaining a convenient silence).
If, against all good sense, Norwich is permitted to mutilate itself architecturally, the inadequacy of the excuse will at least be recorded as a warning to posterity. Small comfort.
‘If the city mutilates itself, the inadequacy of the excuse will at least be a warning to posterity ’