Holocaust Memorial for Victoria Tower Gardens

These highly controversial and politicised proposals were struck down by the High Court on the basis that the 1900 Act establishing the Gardens had not been considered at the Planning Inquiry. The Act clearly prevented the proposals as planned, and should have been considered at the Inquiry and by the Minister when granting planning permission.

The London Parks and Gardens Trust is a charity concerned with preserving and enhancing London’s green open spaces. In this case and with much public support they sought to prevent a planning application for a Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre being built on Victoria Tower Gardens (VTG), adjacent to the Houses of Parliament. Though they supported the principle of a compelling memorial being built in honour of the victims of the Holocaust, they believed that the proposed location of this memorial was inappropriate as Victoria Gardens had historic listed structures and had been a garden for public recreation since 1880. The common slogan of objectors was “Right idea, wrong place”.

Building this memorial would have harmed the historic environment of the gardens, the trees, and the setting of the listed structures, including particularly a memorial to the slavery abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton MP (as it happens, an ancestor of the founder of this firm). It would also have contravened the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 which in effect gave rise to the current arrangement of Victoria Tower Gardens and the surrounding area which required the area to be laid out as gardens. The Trust applied under s.288 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 to quash the decision by the Minister of State for housing to grant planning permission for the installation of the Memorial and Learning Centre (which would have been a large excavated underground structure taking up much of the northern part of the gardens).

There were various grounds of challenge, including to the assessment of the historic environment of VTG and the setting of the Buxton memorial, treatment of alternative sites, and contravention of the 1900 Act. The first was rejected, but Mrs Justice Thornton sitting in the High Court observed that s.8 of 1900 Act 1900 provided for the land to be laid out and ‘maintained for use as a garden open to the public’, and this imposed a continuing obligation to keep the land in use as a public garden, fettering activities which conflicted with that purpose. This was an impediment to the scheme which should have been considered by the inspector. This is especially so given the emphasis on building the memorial in Holocaust survivors’ lifetimes. This also meant that the inspector erred in his treatment of alternative sites for the memorial as, again, this obligation imposed by s.8 was a material consideration, and the inspector had considered alternative sites and their deliverability without assessing that at VTG in the context of this statutory restriction.

The High Court quashed the decision to allow for further consideration of the implications of the 1900 Act. The Court of Appeal refused the Minister and the Secretary of State (who was the proponent of the project) permission to appeal, strongly agreeing with Thornton J’s construction of the 1900 Act as an obstacle that could not be ‘wished away’.

The case followed an earlier judicial review, before the Inquiry, in effect as to whether the Minister could make an objective decision given his relationship inside the Secretary of State’s department. The Minister at the time was Chris Pincher MP and his boss the Secretary of State Robert Jenrick MP. The High Court held that he could do so, but that the so-called handling arrangements, designed to insulate the two parties, required amendment. While substantively unsuccessful, the case was referred to in and assisted the later challenge.