The Court of Appeal has refused architecture conservation group Save Britain’s Heritage (SAVE) permission to pursue a legal challenge to planning permission for a 19-storey tower, called The Cube, opposite London’s Paddington Station, W2
According to Landmark Chambers, while the court gave permission to challenge the secretary of state’s decision not to give reasons for not calling in the scheme for his own determination, it held that it would be an abuse of process for SAVE to amount a collateral attack on the local council’s grant of planning permission and listed building consent.
This effectively frees the development to proceed without threat of legal challenge.
The scheme comprises a mixed-use commercial building providing up to 50,000 sq m (GEA) floorspace of office/commercial uses, retail and café/restaurant uses at lower levels and top floor level; a retail/restaurant building on Praed Street; a new major piazza including pedestrianisation of London Street; a new access road between Winsland Street and Praed Street; hard and soft landscaping, new underground station entrance and new Bakerloo Line ticket hall; and associated infrastructure and interface highway and transport works for underground connections and ancillary works.
Last year, Mrs Justice Lang rejected SAVE’s claim that the secretary of state erred when he refused to intervene in the planning process because he didn’t give reasons.
She said that “the truth of the matter” was that SAVE was attempting to “use a successful reasons challenge as an indirect means” of quashing the decision to allow planning permission for the development.
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