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Objectors reach truce over £1bn Chelsea Barracks plan
Mira Bar-Hillel24 Feb 2009
FINAL plans for the £1billion Chelsea Barracks scheme are to be submitted this week after developers reached a compromise with campaigners.
Open space at the site has been trebled from two to 6.2 acres and developers have pledged that the parkland will commemorate military history.
Plans to be submitted to Westminster council also reveal that the three eight-storey apartment blocks have been replaced by four-storey "pavilions", meaning the number of flats has been cut from 638 to 552. Half will be for sale and the rest will be "affordable" - offered through a shared-ownership scheme, as rent-to-buy or for "within reach" prices.
The move brings to an end months of negotiations between Project Blue, the development company led by Qatari Diar and Nick and Christian Candy, and residents.
A Project Blue spokesman said: "Over the past six months we have implemented a very extensive outreach programme to our neighbours and stakeholders, during which we have listened and responded to their concerns.
"On the key issues of height, massing and the public space, the scheme that we are now submitting for planning consent has achieved a high degree of consensus although we accept that we will never achieve unanimity on the architecture."
The revised application appears to have calmed down the scheme's most vociferous - and influential - objectors. Randa Hanna, of the Belgravia Residents' Association, said: "We are pleased that dialogue with the developers seems to be, at long last, more constructive, as they acknowledge that concessions have to be made.
"However, we reserve comment on the specifics of the proposals until we see the full planning application."
Major General Peter Currie, Lieutenant Governor of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, said: "We have been shown the revised scheme which, in our view, is much improved. It appears to have satisfied our earlier objections."
But resident Orlando Mostyn-Owen - Mayor Boris Johnson's former brother-in-law - said: "There are still major concerns with light, privacy, bulk and height. These are fundamental planning issues and they have not, in my opinion, been resolved."
The initial decision will be made by Westminster council, but the Mayor and Communities Secretary Hazel Blears will have to approve the development.
The fate of the former guards' chapel on the site still depends on whether or not Culture Minister Barbara Follett decides to list it.
If she does not, it will be demolished and replaced by a "landscaping concept", which will be developed with the input of a consultative panel of senior representatives of the military. The scheme will include a memorial sculpture.
