Gove pauses City of London plan to demolish old Museum of London

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A contentious plan to demolish the former Museum of London to make way for new offices has been placed on hold by Michael Gove, even as the City of London backed the scheme.

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.

But the project is now paused after Gove, levelling-up secretary, issued a “holding directive” while he considers whether to launch a review.

Campaigners and Barbican residents 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.

Gove 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.

The levelling up secretary 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”.

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 it was “disappointed” by the City vote and urged Gove to launch a further review.

“The City is both applicant and the local planning authority and as such this complex and contested scheme must be subject to the highest levels of scrutiny,” the group said.

It said replacing the current structures with a larger office complex “would result in much greater carbon emissions than any other option” in the long term and 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.

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.

The City corporation said it would “await the secretary of state’s final decision” on whether to review London Wall West or let it go ahead.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities declined to specify when ministers would decide.