A 34-storey tower is proposed just beside the heliport in Battersea.
“Sky is the limit” seems to be the mantra of property developers in York Road. If their idea is to test the will of Wandsworth Council to adhere to their local planning policies, they would not do otherwise.
A screening opinion (called EIA, for Environmental Impact Assessment) was submitted at the very end of November last year to test the mood for a tower of 34 storeys just beside the heliport in Battersea/York Road (Heliport House 30-40 Lombard Road EIA reference 2024/3921). The proposal would include 147 residential apartments.
The site currently comprises a five-storey vacant office building and two adjacent industrial garages. To the north, the site is bounded by Lookers Land Rover, a car dealership. To the west is the London Heliport, which is separated from the site by Bridges Court Road. To the east and south is the Heliport Industrial Estate, which comprises two rows of low-rise industrial buildings, of which the site’s industrial garages form a part.

As the site is adjacent to the London Heliport, the Applicant confirmed they had consulted with the Heliport in July 2023, which requested more information before releasing any response. However, the applicant is confident that the design of the development proposal does not raise concerns from an aviation perspective.
A 20-storey tower was granted in 2014, but never built
Before considering further, it is important to note that a previous planning proposal has been granted in 2014 to erect a tower of 15 storeys constructed over the existing five-storey Heliport House building (20 storeys high in total) and 14 residential flats (each floor is a stand alone unit) all market price (p.a. 2013/6052). There was no affordable dwellings on-site, but they proposed to compensate with a contribution towards the provision of off site affordable housing. The plan was to retain the current Heliport House building but to re-clad and extend it to include a conference room at third floor level with off street car parking at ground floor level. The planning application was approved by 4 votes to 3 (with Labour councillors opposing).
The current proposal is more than double the previous application and contains ten times more units. The applicant’s confidence that “the design […] does not raise concerns from an aviation perspective” seems questionable, as in the 2014 application for a 20-storey tower (therefore nearly half the proposed building), the London Heliport objected to the plan on grounds of flight safety, citing the winds and turbulence created by tall structures around the heliport site and its vicinity.

It is also interesting to note that although all the new constructions are proposed as car-free, the officer’s report in 2014 stated that the parking survey carried out on the adjoining roads showed high demand for parking.
At the time, the proposal received 157 objections (versus 4 supports), which is in the highest range compared to similar planning applications.
In the report submitted by the applicant, it is ironic to see that they justify their tower by claiming that “the surrounding residential properties experience uncharacteristically high levels of daylight and sunlight amenity for an urban inner London location“, which implies that, thanks to their tower, it will help reduce that excessive light! This is confirmed later in the document as they state:
“Due to the current underdeveloped nature of the site, its central location, and the positioning of the neighbouring buildings, it is expected the proposal will have effects on its neighbours.”
Last but not least, the proposal significantly exceeds the 10-storey guideline for this area (30 metres for 10 storeys under Council rules), which serves as further confirmation that many developers disregard planning rules and will test the will of the Council to adhere to its own statutory policies.
A similar question on the size of the building arose four years ago for another tower in York Road. During a pre-application meeting in 2021 Wandsworth planning officers justified the breach of policy as “marginal”. In previous application discussions, they seemed to encourage taller buildings, while highlighting that in their view the landmark of the area should be the 32 storey planned for York Garden (but actually delayed due to lack of funding!). It eventually resulted into the approval of a 23 storeys for 57 Lombard Road.
The mood regarding very tall buildings is, however, substantially different since the Labour administration took control after the 2022 local elections. During the Planning Application Committee in August 2022, Councillor Humphries (former chair of the Planning Application Committee in the previous Conservative administration and strong supporter of tall building) made reference to the statutory planning documents, something he had previously often dismissed. He insisted several times that the 24/23 storeys was “significantly” over limits set out at a maximum of 7 to 20 storeys in the local plan.
- Read: Co-living replaced by normal residential tenure but still more than 23 storeys for 57 Lombard Road

However, due to its proximity to the heliport, the maximum height is reduced to 10 storeys for the site in the local plan. In its response to the scoping request, Wandsworth planners highlighted the condition: “The site is located within the tall building zone “TB-B2-05” of the WLP with maximum appropriate height range for the zone of 7 to 10 storeys.”
Although the extravagant size of the building might raise questions, the applicant has no difficulty justifying a tall building at this location, as this has been encouraged under the Conservative administration between 2015 and 2022 and stated in the EIA document: “The site sits within close proximity to many other tall buildings (with other tall buildings consented) and therefore although there will be an impact on the surrounding townscape, the visual and townscape impact is not anticipated to be significant.”
Nevertheless, in a particularly ironic perspective, they also claim that their proposal could be justified by the very controversial schemes of Glassmill at Battersea Bridge. Notably, in that case, they wrongly state the pre-application document as indicating “a building height of up to ground and 33 storeys (34 storeys total)” whilst the final application under consideration is for a 28-storey tower.
Moreover, as highlighted multiple times by societies and community groups, Wandsworth Council has consistently failed to assess the cumulative impact of developments in the area. This includes not only the impact of individual developments but also the profound changes they have triggered collectively, without ensuring adequate provision of public services and transport infrastructure (the proposal site itself is located within a public transport accessibility level (PTAL) of 3, indicating only medium accessibility, despite the proximity to Clapham Junction station).
The Council still lacks clarity on the display of a scoping opinion
An EIA is a process that evaluates the potential environmental effects of a proposed project or development, and this is not an official application, although developers often use it to “test” their proposal before submitting more or less the same plan. For instance, such a screening opinion was submitted for a 17-storey tower at 98 York Road in 2015, and an identical planning application followed (and was eventually granted).
Local resident might remember that in January 2024, an EIA was submitted for a 38-storey tower at the bottom of Battersea Bridge. Eventually, in April 2024, a formal application was filed, this time proposing a tower with an element of 33 storeys (34 if you count the first double floor) up to 174 square metres of commercial floorspace at ground floor and up to 142 residential units.
Following the display of the application on their Planning portal for the Battersea Bridge tower, Wandsworth Council received more than 330 objections from local residents and amenity societies expressing their discontent with the application. March 2024 Planning Forum, Nick Calder, the Head of Development Management, expressed frustration over the public’s misunderstanding of the Screening Opinion request, reiterating that it differs from a planning application and does not automatically imply that there will be a request for the proposal.
However, even the Chair of the Planning Committee commented that it lacked clarity. This is probably the reason why this time (application 2024/0764) the officers have displayed for the start a note in the description of the “planning application” page saying: “THIS IS NOT A PLANNING APPLICATION”.

Nevertheless, this was a short-lived decision, as for the heliport application there was no indication that this was different from a planning application, except for those who understand the term EIA.

Therefore, the Council has still not implemented any measures (not even a formal procedure) to improve clarity between a Screening request, which does not require public comments (the Head of Development Management stated they don’t read most of these), and a formal planning application, where comments are important.