LOTS ROAD

The Chairman of the Society’s Planning Committee, Sir Paul Lever, has written to the Chairman and members of the RBKC Planning Committee as follows:

I am writing to you on behalf of the Chelsea Society about the planning application for the redevelopment of Lots Road South (PP/25/04416) which you are due to consider at your meeting on 16 December.

The Chelsea Society exists to protect the interests of all those who live and work in Chelsea and to preserve and enhance the character of this unique part of London. We have over 1100 members. We urge you to scrutinise this application with particular care, not least because the Council is the landowner and development sponsor as well as the planning authority. It is important therefore that you apply the same standards to it as you would to an application in which the Council did not have its own commercial vested interest.

The site was subject to a Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) as well as a specific Site Allocation in the 2024 New Local Plan. Both these documents were themselves subject to lengthy public consultation and in the case of the Site Allocation to review by the Planning Inspectorate which demanded changes to the wording originally proposed by Council officers. It seems to us that on any objective analysis the application cannot be considered to be compatible with the requirements set out in these documents. For example:

The site falls within an Employment Zone (the only such zone in Chelsea) and development should only be permitted if it is employment-led and respects the agent of change principle. The Planning Inspector set the employment requirements as having ‘Around 4,000 sq m (GIA) of commercial floorspace (Class E and B8) of which at least 3,000 sq m will be business floorspace (Class E(g) office, research and development or light industrial or B8 storage or distribution). The Planning Application states that the commercial floorspace within the Employment Zone is 1,438.7 sq m. This is less than half the minimum requirement of 3,000 sq m established by the Planning Inspector and therefore cannot be considered employment-led.
The SPD and Site Allocation, endorsed by the Planning Inspector, set the maximum heights between 6 and 10 storeys. The Planning Application includes two buildings within RBKC, one 13 storeys and the other 11 storeys. It therefore fails the Council’s own policy on heights.
The SPD and the Site Allocation sets the number of new gross residential (C3) units at ‘Around 100’. The Planning Application proposes more than double this number, with 209 units. During the New Local Plan process, officers tried to change ‘around’ to ‘a minimum of’ and the Planning Inspector explicitly rejected this, given the constrained nature of the site and the need for the development to be employment-led. The Planning Application therefore manifestly fails the quantum-of-development test established in the Site Allocation and the SPD.
There are numerous other defects in the Planning Application when measured against the SPD and the Site Allocation, such as the lack of variation in the roofline along Lots Road, the lack of respect for the scale of buildings along Lots Road, the loss of the Auction House, the lack of a buffer zone along the railway line and the absence of a workable servicing plan within the development.

The report from Council officers invites you to ignore these inconsistencies and to endorse an application which is wrong both in law and in policy and which will be will be resented by local residents and businesses. The Chelsea Society urges you not to do so without further reflection. The Lots Road Forum has submitted detailed proposals for improving the scheme to make it more compliant with the New Local Plan and which would in their view not jeopardise its underlying viability. They would tackle the problem of the canyonisation of Lots Road, as well as design issues, traffic congestion and the future operation of the community centre and of the affordable workspace units.

These suggestions have not been addressed in the report before you. We urge you, before taking any final decision, to require the Applicants to address them seriously and to discuss them with local representatives.