2y ago

Yes, rebuild the Crooked House brick by brick – and buttress local planning, too

www.theguardian.com

Yes, rebuild the Crooked House brick by brick – and buttress local planning, too | Simon Jenkins

6 comments

Even the demolition contractor, whose digger was actually booked before the pub caught fire, is embarrassed.
I didn't know that part. Shocking.
- Pretty obvious that was the case, but good to have it confirmed.
  100% they didn't want it there, but it had to look like an accident.
  
  I've just read the Wikipedia article. They did a really shitty job of making it look like an accident!
- They blocked access to it went it was on fire too. These guys need an example making of them.
Private Eye's Nooks and Corners column has been cataloguing the tendency of historic buildings of interest to developers to "go on fire" for years.
https://twitter.com/PrivateEyeNews/status/1267380167778930688?s=20
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Historic England, which wants the Crooked House restored, said it received a request to list the building a few days before the fire.
This is perhaps more evidence for the inadequacy of the current system in England – witness the ongoing row over saving the unlisted M&S store on Oxford Street in London.
The idea that a civil servant studying an appeal can better judge the value of a pub than can local people must be absurd – after all, it merely requires a developer to cry “more housing” and Whitehall capitulates.
Six years ago an attempt was made to correct the disastrous error of the Cameron government in easing change of use to allow pubs to be redeveloped at will.
Change of use is allowed in the event of the pub being unprofitable for a set period of time – a test vastly eased by its destruction.
An example must be shown to the howling cacophony of developer lobbyists now charging across the English landscape, deriding democracy as nimbyism.
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6 comments