Nimbys: no skyscrapers anywhere – even Vauxhall

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This week, Nimby Watch is in Vauxhall, where people are up in arms about a proposed new high-rise…

Alright then, Vauxhall. According to my notes, we’re in a nondescript, marshy village near London, named for Faulke’s (or Fox’s) Hall, though not really known by that until the Pleasure Gardens opened in 1740. I mean, you’re right as far as it goes, but I’m assuming your quick trawl of Wikipedia got sidelined somewhere in the early 19th century. Vauxhall is extremely central, on the zone one/two boundary, right by the river, and the only time it’s ever really referred to as a village is when the word ‘gay’ is right there beforehand.

I can spot someone getting their defence in first when I see it. I can only assume that whatever building is being proposed here is pretty huge, then? Well… yes. A consortium of various private equity types has submitted plans for a major mixed-use development that they’re calling ‘Vauxhall Square’.

It will include a cinema, hotel, retail space and some community and medical facilities – but mostly it will include an awful lot of housing: 1,097 homes, housing for 699 students, and 1,164 ‘co-living studios’, a term for a form of housing often known as ‘build-to-rent’: new flats purpose built for the rental market, which can be useful for early career professionals with no deposits to buy.

That’s… an awful lot of homes. Is this some huge site, or are we talking high-rise here? For the bulk of the residential building, there’s some serious high-rise action going on. The proposals include a 69-storey residential tower, which critics have been very keen to flag would be the ‘second-tallest residential building in the UK’.

I mean, I wouldn’t want a skyscraper on my doorstep. And look, they’re not exactly great for the character of a historical area, are they? Have you been to Vauxhall any time this century? The site for this proposed development is pretty small, and it is surrounded by tall buildings: on one side, there’s the 50-storey St George’s Wharf Tower (often known as the Vauxhall Tower), finished in 2014, and on the other is the 57-storey One Nine Elms City Tower, which opened in 2023. So a new skyscraper is hardly changing the character of the area.

Hang on a second. Just because there’s some skyscrapers there already doesn’t mean we need more. Aren’t two enough? Why’ve builders got to get greedy about it? Well, there’s a housing shortage in London, and rents and prices are still dramatically higher than wages. That only gets fixed with more supply, and when land is in short supply, building up makes sense.

The trouble is, people like you object to high-rise buildings when there are none in the area, because it will ‘change its character’, so surely you can’t turn around now and say we can’t have more skyscrapers in the area because there are enough already?

I can if I want to, and you can’t stop me. So, what’s happened with planning? Well, after two years of back and forth, Lambeth Council approved the development.

You must be delighted. How are locals taking the news? Well, the Brixton Buzz didn’t seem too happy. Its headline on the story was ‘Labour and Lib Dems approve 69-storey “carbon monster” in Vauxhall with just 6% social rent homes – Greens outvoted’, and the article noted that ‘just 122 social-rent homes would be provided on site – around 6% of the residential accommodation – all located in a separate lower-rise block. An earlier version proposed 35% affordable housing’.

I’m not surprised they’re angry: 6% is a lot less than 35%, what an outrageous bit of bait-and-switch. Good on the Greens for voting against it, and for the headline in making that so clear. Yes, that was very prominent, wasn’t it? The small bullet point at the bottom of the story – under ‘more info’ – stating ‘This opinion article supplied by Lambeth Greens’ might explain that, though it’s a shame no one felt the need to mention that more prominently.

But yes, 6% is a lot less than 35%. Except they’re measuring a different thing. A ‘social rent’ home is what you think of when you think of a council house. ‘Affordable’ housing is a much wider measure, including homes for keyworkers, starter homes and the build-to-rent homes. The article elides the two of them together as if there’s been a bigger switch than there has.

This gets fiendishly complex. The requirement for affordable housing for most London projects has been dropped to 20%, in acknowledgement that almost no projects were getting off the ground. This project includes 25% affordable housing on site, plus contributions to Lambeth’s housing fund totalling £80 million, to bring it to the ‘equivalent’ of 35%. The developers could argue here that they’ve done everything right and still just got all the usual blowback from the Nimbys.

Well, you must be happy anyway. They’ve got approval. Are the shovels in the ground yet? Of course they aren’t. Developers have been trying to build on this site since 2012, and it’s only just got approval. Obviously Historic England and various other councils are raising objections to it. And because of its scale, it has to go to the Mayor of London for approval too – and Historic England could ask the Secretary of State to intervene. So, even with the approval, nothing is likely to happen before 2028 at the earliest.

Well, it can’t hurt to be methodical, can it? Just go back and finish the Wikipedia page already, will you?

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