Issue - meetings

Report of the Chief Planning Officer and Development Director.

The Committee considered a report of the Chief Planning Officer and Development Director relative to 115-123 Houndsditch, London, EC3A 7BU, specifically demolition of existing buildings and construction of a new building comprising four basement levels (plus one basement mezzanine), ground floor plus 23 upper storeys, including office use (Class E), flexible retail/café use (Class E); community space (Sui Generis), ancillary basement cycle parking, servicing and plant; new public realm and highway works; and other works associated with the development.

The Chief Planning Officer and Development Director introduced the application and referred to the late representations and accompanying addendum report published and circulated yesterday. He began by highlighting that the site in question was to the south west of the Middlesex Street Estate and north of Houndsditch. He reported that the existing buildings were four buildings built in the 1980s as a comprehensive redevelopment and were somewhat unexceptional and unwelcoming. When sharing the existing site plan, the Chief Planning Officer drew Members’ attention to Clothier Street which ran north-south through the existing site. The proposed removal of this was one of the key elements of this scheme. Under the proposed scheme, Clothier Street would be stopped up, removed and replaced by new public realm on the periphery. He went on to remark that Clothier Street had had a rather transient life  and shared maps from the past depicting how the previous street pattern had been more east-west. It was reported that Clothier Street itself had only been established in the 1980s and that the name itself was not of great antiquity given that it was introduced in 1906 in recognition of the former Cloth Market which was in the area. 

Members were shown images of the entrance to Clothier Street approaching from the North with the Chief Planning Officer describing it