City of London approves plan to demolish old Museum of London

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The City of London has approved a contentious plan to demolish the former Museum of London to make way for a new office complex despite strong opposition from Barbican residents.

A planning committee of the City of London Corporation on Wednesday voted to grant the local authority permission to knock down the 1970s museum and next door Bastion House tower on the edge of the Barbican estate at the heart of the Square Mile.

Local campaigners had lodged more than 800 objections to the City of London Corporation’s plan for the site, known as “London Wall West”, on environmental and heritage grounds.

The case is the latest high-profile planning dispute to feature in a fierce debate over whether ageing buildings should be pulled down in favour of new, energy-efficient developments or preserved to avoid unnecessary construction.

Michael Gove, levelling up secretary, suffered a High Court defeat last month when judges overturned his decision to block the demolition of the Marks and Spencer store at Marble Arch. 

Gove had pushed for the retailer’s current Art Deco flagship to be refitted, rather than knocked down, but the court found he had “misinterpreted the national planning policy”. 

Gove has issued a “holding directive” on the London Wall West project while he considers whether to launch a review, according to City planning documents. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities did not immediately comment.

Questions around “embodied carbon” — a term for the emissions produced in the whole life cycle of a building, including its construction materials — have become one of the thorniest issues in UK planning policy. 

Environmental advocates argue that retrofitting old buildings should be the preferred option to make best use of emission-intensive materials such as glass, steel and concrete in existing structures. 

Many developers agree with a “retrofit first” approach but say that revamping buildings is sometimes not feasible, or that they can achieve lower overall carbon emissions using new materials to create fresh buildings that operate more efficiently. 

Alistair Watson, planning partner at law firm Taylor Wessing, said the Museum of London case touched on the most sensitive planning debates. “It’s got local stakeholders. It’s got heritage. It’s got embodied carbon. And everyone has their opinion.”  

Barbican Quarter Action, the local campaign group, said the decision to replace the current structures with a larger office complex “would result in much greater carbon emissions than any other option” in the long term. 

The group said the new design would also “damage” the heritage and design characteristic of the Grade II-listed Barbican estate. 

The new buildings were “bulbous . . . completely out of scale with their surroundings” and did not “respect the orthogonal grid, which is the underlying design concept for the Barbican and its neighbourhood”, it added. 

Residents noted that the development would also disrupt traffic and the raised “highwalk” pedestrian routes, distinctive to the estate’s design, that link it with some surrounding buildings.

Watson said heritage questions in planning were “like 12 angels dancing on a pinhead. It’s very delicate. That nuanced element makes it open to challenge. It makes decisions like this very complex, extremely fraught and finely balanced.”

The City of London Corporation, which owns the London Wall West site, will seek to entice a private sector developer to take on the project.

“Demand for high-quality and sustainable office space remains high and this development would accommodate future job growth in the City,” the corporation said. 

It said analysis showed that “over a 60+ years operational cycle the total carbon is lower for the redevelopment scenario on a per metre squared basis than for retrofit scenarios”. 

Planners for the City said that, in addition to offices, the new buildings would include “a vibrant public plaza at street level, paired with . . . an elevated serene and secluded garden at highwalk level”. 

In 2021, the body responsible for the Square Mile scrapped plans to replace the museum with a £288mn concert hall dubbed the “Tate Modern for classical music”. 

The Museum of London closed in 2022 after 46 years in the London Wall location. It plans to reopen as the London Museum in 2026 in new premises in Smithfield Market. 

Local opponents are likely to appeal against the decision in favour of the new development. They argue the City’s process has been flawed, including “inadequate public consultation”. Barbican Quarter Action did not immediately respond to the planning committee’s vote.

The City of London Corporation said: “Stakeholder engagement remained a top priority as we progressed with this initiative.”