It is now crunch time. 

As expected, the Planning Application for the Holocaust Memorial and underground Learning Centre was submitted to Westminster Council on 19 December 2018, just a few days before Xmas.  For those not familiar with the planning process, the next step for the Council is to ‘validate’ the application, and to assign it to a Case Officer, who will then be in charge of the application as a whole, bringing in however other team members to advise re specific areas of expertise (conservation, highways, green space etc). 

Until a project is officially validated (usually within 10 working days), it is not possible to examine the actual drawings and documentation submitted, and the submission does not even appear on the list of applications.  Once the projects is validated, the clock starts ticking, and the council has 13 weeks to determine a case as complex as this one (or 8 weeks for smaller applications).

We are coming therefore to a very significant point for our campaign, as we will finally be in a position to examine in detail the project, and to assess the planning arguments that it relies on.  We have indeed been very wary of what we have been shown so far – the public exhibitions were, at best, a lot of fudging and window-dressing, and at worse an intentional attempt to muddy the waters.  It was indeed very clear that anything that was likely to be contentious was neatly avoided - or drawn in such a way as to make it impossible to understand with any level of certainty.

Once the application is underway, there will be a period of several weeks in which the Council will be seeking opinions from the general public and from a large number of Statutory Consultees ( ie interested parties such as local amenity groups, Historic England, Royal Parks etc).  This is when we will be asking all of you to write to the council to state your objection to the project. 

When the time comes, we will be assisting you with a series of prompts as to what arguments will be considered (only arguments that have a planning legitimacy will help us, but there are lots and lots that we can use); you will need to use your own words in order to make your comments count.  Every comment counts – we want thousands of objections to pour into WCC, showing the huge level of local, city-wide, national and even international disapproval for this scheme.

Thank you very much for all your support!  Hopefully, Westminster’s highly experienced planners will stand by their many irrefutable policies – all of which clearly indicate that it is an outrage to even think of building in a Royal Park.

More soon…please be vigilant and watch this space!