Flower Island’s plans for the demolition and redevelopment of 52 Tottenham Street, W1, were given the green light by councillors when they went back in front of Camden’s planning committee yesterday (13 July).
Permission was granted, with all bar one committee member voting in favour of the scheme, on the condition there is a firm construction management plan from the applicant that is made in consultation with the council.
The scheme, which will comprise three one-bedroom duplexes and one three-bedroom quadruplex, came under fire from New York-based Take-Two Interactive Software after it said a consultation was carried out improperly.
Take-Two, which is the parent company of Grand Theft Auto creator Rockstar Games, added that the scheme will cause a loss of light for the roof terraces and rear windows at its London headquarters, located at the neighbouring 30 Cleveland Street.
In the meeting, the planning officer said the light assessment conducted by the council in response to complaints from Take-Two showed “a substantial loss of sunlight on that terrace”. He added: “if that were a residential garden, small playground or park, then that would be of concern, but loss of sunlight to an office building carries relatively little weight with regard to our policies.”
For this reason, he said that the findings “made very little change” and recommended that the scheme still be granted approval.
The committee heard objections from Serhad Koro, managing director EMEA/APAC of Take-Two Interactive, who said the multi-billion-dollar company “could have moved anywhere in London” but chose 30 Cleveland Street “for specific reasons”, adding that the two terraces are “integral to what we do in that building”.
The scheme, which will see a five-storey block replaced with an 11-storey office and residential building, was granted resolution for approval in August last year and received second-stage approval from the Greater London Authority in October. It will also feature an affordable workspace offering, above which will be the residential units.
“This development does not have any benefit to anyone in the borough apart from the developer,” added Koro. The video game company, which signed for 30 Cleveland Street in 2019 and moved in during 2021, claimed it had not been appropriately consulted during the consultation phase.
A representative for developer Flower Island said the development would “significantly improve the existing substandard residential offering” of the building. He added that the terrace areas mentioned by Take-Two appear to be “break-out areas” and it is “not a common industry practice to consider breakout areas in analysis”.
The representative said “the loss of some sunlight is inevitable” but “the level of harm certainly does not warrant the refusal of the application”.
Councillors questioned the validity of the development on the balance of harm created. The case officer was asked by councillor Edmund Frondigoun to clarify that the borough had not ever refused any other applications on the grounds of harm to office space, which was confirmed by both the chair, Heather Johnson, and the case officer.
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