Out-Law / Your Daily Need-To-Know

Community group reveals alternative plans for Royal Mail Mount Pleasant redevelopment

29 Sep 2015, 12:57 pm

A residents' group opposed to approved plans for the redevelopment of Royal Mail's Mount Pleasant sorting office site in central London has revealed an alternative proposal for the site.

Mayor of London Boris Johnson granted approval last year for Royal Mail Group's plans to build a mixed-use development with 681 homes in 15-storey towers at the Farringdon site.

Local community group the Mount Pleasant Association (MPA) has revealed alternative plans for a lower-rise redevelopment of the site, including 10% more affordable homes. The plans include an arrangement of seven-storey mansion blocks in a 'circus' around a new garden square; a pocket park, and shops and cafés.

According to a report in Building Design, the MPA and lobby group Create Streets said they would submit the plans to the London Boroughs of Camden and Islington by the end of the year and would attempt to buy the site from Royal Mail in 2016 with the assistance of a consortium including financial services company Legal and General.

The MPA received a contribution from the government's 'Community Right to Build' fund to bring forward plans for part of the site and is in the process of producing a neighbourhood plan to guide development in the area.

The London Boroughs of Camden and Islington submitted a joint application in May for the judicial review of Johnson's decision to approve Royal Mail Group's plans. The two authorities, in whose administrative area the development site lies, claimed that the mayor had "failed in his duty to provide the maximum amount of affordable housing on the site that could reasonably delivered" and that the proposed rate of affordable rent was too high.

Planning expert Richard Ford of Pinsent Masons, the law firm behind Out-Law.com said: "Neither the community right to build nor the neighbourhood planning processes are supposed to be used to look at alternatives to already consented schemes, albeit this permission is under challenge. This is part of a growing trend of objectors to use processes designed to forward plan for development, rather than present alternatives to consented schemes with the hope of stopping or slowing down the consented development. In my view, the government's localism agenda is being misapplied."