Labour's Towering Ambition Checked

10.28.00am BST (GMT +0100) Thu 27th Sep 2007

Lib Dems have criticised the lack of any affordable housing in the Doon Street Tower

Labour plans to turn parts of Waterloo into some kind of down town Chicago have received a last minute setback following approval by the Labour dominated Lambeth Planning Committee and London Mayor and skyscraper king Ken Livingstone.

The controversial 140 metre tall Doon Street Tower development has now been called-in by the Secretary of State for Communities, Hazel Blears, for Public Inquiry which could scupper plans not only for Doon Street but potentially influence a whole string of towers being lined-up for planning approval in the near future.

The Doon Street Development applicants proposed a 43 storey residential tower, a new leisure centre and swimming pool, and a new headquarters building for the Rambert Dance Company on vacant land previously used as car parking behind the Royal National Theatre on the South Bank.

Among a number of objectors for the scheme were English Heritage, the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) and the Council-funded Waterloo Community Development Group (WCDG).

WCDG director Michael Ball criticized "a fabulously extensive leisure centre.... whose extravagance undermines the achievement of any other objectives" and "giving away a portion of the site for a high status arts HQ has nothing to do with meeting the objectives for this site."

Michael Ball concluded, "These hubristic gestures drive the proposal toward an unwelcome and ill-sited tall building over-stuffed with private apartments and a site crammed with development of which 85% has little or no relevance to the local community."

The local community has spoken out against the overbearing tower at Doon Street

Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the tower block scheme was that of 329 brand new residential units on a prestigious riverside location not one was an affordable home. Lambeth Labour politicians on the Planning Committee apparently thought that was fine and voted it through, and Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone gave it his blessing too.

Only Liberal Democrat Councillor Brian Palmer on the Planning Committee voted against the scheme and said, "I cannot support a housing scheme of such a scale and in this prime riverside location that does not offer a single affordable home to hard-pressed Lambeth residents."

Cllr Palmer added, "I am shocked and hugely disappointed that Labour members feel that it is morally right to pass a grandiose and flawed scheme that is such a monumental slap in the face for the homeless in the borough."