Campaigners bring legal challenge to ITV Studios redevelopment 

A campaign group has brought a legal challenge to the redevelopment of the former ITV studios on London’s South Bank.  Campaign group Save our South Bank said it had instructed law firm Richard Buxton Solicitors to bring a High Court judicial review of secretary of state Michael Gove’s decision to approve the project.  Developer Mitsubishi Estate London and development manager Co-Re want to redevelop 60-72 Upper Ground, SE1, as a mixed-use scheme, including a 25-storey office building connected to two buildings of 14 and six storeys. The scheme was approved by Lambeth Council in March 2022 and by the GLA in August of that year. It was finally approved by Gove in February this year.  Even so, the proposed redevelopment has been controversial. Critics dubbed the proposed building “the slab” and said it would be an eyesore that would overshadow the Queen’s Walk and wreck views of listed buildings such as St Paul’s Cathedral.  Specifically, SOS argued that Gove’s decision was legally flawed and contradicted his recent announcements regarding housing priorities and reducing carbon. “The ‘Slab’ development not only threatens the enjoyment of millions walking the South Bank, as well as multiple protected views of national heritage, but also undermines efforts to address our city’s housing crisis while needlessly emitting over 100,000 tonnes of CO2,” said SOS’s Michael Ball, a local campaigner advocating for sustainable development and affordable housing.  “Gove’s decision, following the High Court decision to quash refusal for the demolition of M&S buildings at Oxford Street, threatens to render toothless vital policy reducing carbon through the circular economy and recycling buildings. Our legal challenge may be the last chance to retrieve this catastrophe” he said.  Image © Make Architects