Michael Gove has blocked Westminster City Council from issuing a final planning consent for Marks & Spencer’s Oxford Street redevelopment.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities confirmed that an article 31 direction had been sent to the council, which will suspend any decision until ministers have had a chance to review the application.
The secretary of state will then decide whether or not to call in the scheme.
The 650,000 sq ft redevelopment of the art deco-fronted store has proven controversial, despite both Westminster City Council and the Greater London Authority giving it the go-ahead.
On 12 April, a spokesperson for the mayor said: “The mayor can only intervene in council planning decisions where the proposed scheme does not conform with the London Plan.
“After a thorough assessment of this proposal, including the total carbon footprint involved, it was determined that grounds did not exist to allow the mayor to intervene. It will therefore remain with Westminster City Council to determine the application.”
The secretary of state sent the council the article 31 notice on 14 April.
The scheme’s architect, Fred Pilbrow, has said that the new building will be far more efficient and sustainable than a refurbishment.
Critics have said this isn’t the case, quoting a report by Simon Sturgis, an expert on low carbon and the built environment, which warned that the total embodied carbon cost of the scheme would be 53,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide over 60 years.
To offset that would require the planting of around 3.2m trees.
However, Pilbrow told EG that the efficiencies over the lifetime of the building more than made up for this. “What we are creating at 458 Oxford Street will be extremely energy-efficient,” Pilbrow said. “It is absolutely best-in-class in terms of the way it performs and the calculations that Arup has done on the overall carbon profile life cycle.”
Those calculations show that the building will pay back the carbon cost of both the demolition and the development within 17 years, and Pilbrow is seeking further refinements that will take that down to just nine.
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