A thumbs-up on proposals for the redevelopment of Liverpool Street station has been described by Griff Rhys Jones, President of the Victorian Society as “a sad day for the City of London.”
From the get-go, plans to reconfigure the Victorian train station to be able to cope with up to 200 million passengers a year — initially in a concept by Network Rail, architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron and Shard developer Sellar — have courted controversy, dubbed by Duncan Wilson, Chief Executive of Historic England as ‘incongruous’, ‘oversized and ‘misconceived’.
Those plans were subsequently pared back by the architectural practice ACME, albeit with a much larger concourse, eight new lifts and 10 new escalators — and notably, a 97-metre-tall glass office building wrapping itself around the old station building.
Today (10 February) the City of London Corporation green-lit these plans, praising a “state-of-the-art, fully accessible station… [making] the local area a much more enjoyable place to visit, work in and travel through.”
Chairman of the City of London Corporation Planning and Transportation Committee, Tom Sleigh, described it as “A late, but very welcome Christmas present for the nation.”
These are not, however, the sentiments of various heritage groups, including the Victorian Society, whose well-known President derided the City of London’s claims, saying:
A disfiguring billion pound office block on top of a major heritage asset is not essential to the City’s development plans, it is doubtful whether it will easily provide the profit to “improve” the concourse, and can only realise a small amount of extra space for the passenger. Its focus is retail opportunities which the commuter doesn’t need. It will destroy an existing conservation area. It demolishes listed buildings. It is harmful to the surrounding historic fabric. It has been proposed on a false PR-led assertion that Network Rail is “under instruction” to build on top of its London Stations. It is not.
The project will still need to jump through some hoops in order to get final sign-off, however— something that the Victorian Society, and its Liverpool Street Station Campaign (LISSCA), is keen won’t happen:
With the backing of thousands of supporters, LISSCA is prepared for the long haul. We will now await the decisions of the Mayor of London and, if necessary, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. We proceed knowing that public support for preserving the station remains strong.
