Hammerson’s proposals for the redevelopment were approved at today’s meeting of the City of London Planning and Transportation committee. Many residents spoke out, and your house group chair along with two other WH residents did make forceful representations – sadly to no avail. Our attentions will now have to focus on ensuring that the construction is planned and managed to minimise disruption, and also to seek minor improvements where these can be made and the developer is willing to incorporate them.
There have already been some concessions achieved through pre-application consultations with the developers – though not as many as we would like. However, we can probably point to the plans for the Highwalks across the site – which will be re-routed but the network will remain – as a significant gain over previous plans.