Wandsworth Council’s planning committee approved the controversial Gasworks redevelopment in a 6-3 vote, with Labour councillors supporting the scheme featuring buildings up to 29 storeys tall. The decision directly contradicts the area’s planning guidelines limiting heights to 7-10 storeys and comes despite strong objections from societies and local communities.

Is the Council falling back to its old habits? Once again it appears that ignoring planning rules is rewarded in Wandsworth. Tony Belton, the chair of the planning application committee in Wandsworth was the first one to raise his hand in approval of the plan, followed by all his Labour colleagues. On Thursday, 27 March 2025, the Council approved the redevelopment of a site in Wandsworth, known as the Gasworks, along the Wandle river.

All six Labour Councillors voted against three Conservatives to approve the redevelopment of the former gasholders site on Swandon Way (p.a. 2022/3954). The application was a hybrid one, with some parts of the site having detailed designs, and other parts being submitted in outline (which means not yet finalised).

The application was originally submitted at the end of 2022 but saw a number of revisions and was more recently reviewed by the Conservation and Heritage Advisory Committee as we reported in November 2024.

The development is a large-scale scheme featuring several high-rise buildings, with the tallest reaching up to 29 storeys. Spread across four plots, it includes a mix of mid- and high-rise structures ranging from 10 to 29 storeys in the detailed plans, and up to 12 storeys in the outline proposals. In total, the scheme will deliver up to 620 new homes, including 40% of affordable housing (with a split tenure of 70% social housing).

The main changes consisted of a very small reduction in height of some of the buildings, with the tallest building being reduced from 30 storeys to 29 storeys and the three buildings arranged in a semi-circle around the edge of the site of the former gasholder brought down by a mix of one to three storeys, but the podium level has raised up by a single storey.

A proposal that contravenes the current planning policies for the area

In 2023, the Wandsworth Society submitted a strong and detailed objection to the application. The Society’s comments were based on the Wandle Delta Masterplan, which was adopted by the Council on 28th September 2021.

According to the Masterplan, “tall buildings must respect the small scale of the River Wandle.” Therefore that part of the site adjoining the river should have buildings not exceeding four storeys tiering back (eastward) away from the river to a maximum of eight storeys. This is obviously not the case with the 12 or 29 storey blocks proposed in the application, says the Society.

As the Wandsworth Society pointed out, the proposed massing of the main tower, with a height of 29 storeys, “is quite ‘out of context’ next to the River Wandle. The site of the tower cannot be considered to be a ‘town centre’ site nor is it close to a ‘cluster’ of buildings of a similar nature. The application cannot be considered to ‘make a positive contribution to local character and context’“. They noted that the tower will dominate the Wandsworth Town Conservation Area and be completely dominant when viewed from Putney Bridge.

This was obviously not the opinion of the developers who pointed out the flexibility in the benefits of development allowed in the planning policies. Steve Sanham, director of the property development company Common Project in charge of the project, said:

“There is significant, and deliberate, flexibility built in to the recommendations of that masterplan to ensure proposals that come forward (particularly on the Gasworks site) are viable and capable of delivery.”

The Society’s criticism extended beyond just the scale of the application. They also considered that the proposed mix of homes does not promote a balanced and diverse mix of uses and criticised the absence of any additional provision made for crossing Armoury Way (no new bridge or routes) or public transport improvement.

The current proposal aims to provide 40% affordable housing (up from 35% in the original scheme) of which 70% will be social rent. While closer to compliance, this still falls short of the emerging policy of 50% affordable housing in new builds. However, the applicants confirmed that the unconditional offer is in fact only 20% and that the 40% offer is conditional on grant funding, which the GLA has rejected as non-compliant (indeed, affordable housing offers need to be unconditional and not linked to hypothetical circumstances).

• Read our article: Make Wandsworth more affordable: the big task of the Council

The application came before the Wandsworth Conservation and Heritage Advisory Committee (often abbreviated as CHAC) at the beginning of November last year. Members expressed concern about fragmented land ownership undermining development quality, urging council investigation.

Mr Catto, representing the Putney Society,  raised serious safety concerns about the tallest building, noting it lacks fire brigade access, delivery access, and parking facilities despite being larger than Grenfell Tower. He called for complete redesign removing this section.

The committee maintained its opposition to the scheme. Peter Farrow from the Wandsworth Society stated:

“They don’t anywhere near come close to addressing the concerns that the Wandsworth Society had about the development. It is, in essence, in terms of its height, albeit it might be slightly lower, but the bulk of the building, its appearance and of the other buildings are so similar to what was previously seen.”

The “context” has changed, said officers

“Officers find the proposed height acceptable, despite exceeding the SPD’s 4 to 10 storeys range”, were the words pronounced during the presentation, before the officer explaining: “The existing context changed the baseline definition of mid-rise and tall buildings in the area. For instance Homebase and B&Q buildings start at 7 and 8 storeys and reach up to 16 storeys.”

It is worth recalling that a Local Plan is intended to span a 15-year period, with formal reviews scheduled every five years. The most recent review took place at the end of 2022, with the updated plan approved in 2023. To suggest, therefore, that the Plan failed to account for the local context—particularly in setting restrictions on building sizes along the Wandle—is to overlook the fact that it was drafted with the emerging context firmly in view just a few years ago.

“Unless one is arguing that the Plan was fundamentally flawed from the outset, any claim that it ignored local considerations is, frankly, absurd” commented a local resident.

The new Wandsworth Local Plan and Policies Map, under final consultation in 2022 and definitely adopted on 19 July 2023, states for the area:

“The maximum appropriate height range for the zone is 7 to 10 storeys, and the appropriate height range for the site should be in accordance with the tall building maps in Appendix 2. The height of developments within that zone should not exceed the heights of, and should be in accordance with, the tall building maps in Appendix 2, which set out the identified maximum appropriate heights in line with Policy LP4. “

Therefore, at the time the application was submitted, it was already in full breach of the local plan and developers chose blatantly to ignore it, rather than comply with it.

As usual, officers justified that the policy allows flexibility, arguing that it says towards the end that “development proposals for tall buildings will only be appropriate […] where they address the requirements of Policy LP4“. However, as a member of the Wandsworth Society pointed out, it is difficult to see how it can be interpreted as so permissive while most if not all the criteria restricting flexibility are also dismissed.

To further support their acceptance of breach of policy, the officer mentioned that the NPPF emphasised optimising site potential and the London Plan and even the Local Plan supported “maximizing site capacity and efficient use“.

Michael Jubb, from the Battersea Society, addressed that arguments of “capacity” when talking about a similar application on Battersea Bridge, offering a relatable analogy:

“The applicants claim that the core reason to go ahead with this application is that it optimises the capacity and the potential of a very small site. You might as well say that I could sell my little house near Clapham Junction and optimise its capacity by building a 20-storey tower instead of my 2-storey house. The claim makes no sense.”

Two hours of criticism of the scheme… before Labour councillors decide to approve it

The Council meeting at the end of March was mostly focused on this prominent application. During nearly 2 hours, councillor after councillor explained how problematic the scheme was.

After citing the discrepancies between the policies advocating 7 to 10 storeys maximum and the scheme being more than four times higher, Labour Councillor Sarah Davies representing the Ward residents confessed: “I feel that’s not a compromise but that it’s just so far removed. I don’t understand it’s taller than any other building in the area” before adding “it’s not Canary Wharf here it’s not Nine Elms but it’s historic Wandsworth town with its heritage, its grade two listed buildings, its conservation areas.”

Her Conservative colleague Will Sweet, also representing the ward residents, explained that the reason why the conservation area was created was to avoid the repeat of the Homebase development nearby with a 17-storey tower.

• Read ou article: Homebase: developers are submitting new plans to be considered by Mayor

In order to illustrate the dichotomy between the presented scheme and the planning policies, Cllr Sweet read what he qualified as a shocking paragraph in the report:

“The Council and the GLA would assess the application as non-compliant with the location and plan-led requirements in Part B of London Plan Policy D9 as it fails to meet the full requirement of Local Plan LP4 in terms of proposed height range. This assessment would be in terms of visual impact, architectural quality, environmental impact and functional impact of the proposal.”

And Will Sweet concluded: “My question is: What is the point of having a local plan that says what the parameters should be if the Council is going to disregard those parameters“.

Cascading effects of Planning Policy breaches: From Gasworks to Armoury Way

In his monthly newsletter, Tony Belton commented with an ounce of fatality:

“The choice we were presented with was to accept the current application or leave the site as it is now and wait for some hypothetical future application, which would need to be as viable in financial terms as the current application, but also better in policy terms. But we are where we are with a dangerous, toxic, empty, under-used site so we accepted the application by 6 votes to 3. “

A member of the local society commented:

“This reasoning is unacceptable because if applied to every brown field site means that no future application for any brown field site could ever be rejected again!  This is clearly nonsense.  Yes it could delay by some months housing people that need housing but that should never be the reason developers get a blanket approval to put up whatever they think they can get away with!”

Was there an alternative? We might never know. But what we do know is that in the past several projects deemed to be unchangeable proved able to become completely different once refused. An example is the 16-storey hotel that was proposed in Falcon Road which became the new 8 storey Travelodge after the applicants went back to the drawing board.

Philip Whyte, Leader Planning Group of the Wandsworth Society said:

“Numbers seem to be the overwhelming criteria these days as far as planning is concerned and if all the right boxes are ticked, and, even if contrary to policy, then all will be well!

A comment made by the Leader of the Planning Applications Committee reflects the desire to ‘move on’ without due regard to approved council policies. The decision to approve the Gasworks Site application, if built, will be standing many decades into the future, when all those responsible will also have “moved on”. Should we accept this in our rush to accede to the ‘greater good!'”

The approval of the Gasworks site despite its non-compliance with established planning policies creates significant effects for nearby applications.

The visual impact of the Armoury Way proposal  (two buildings up to 10-storeys high on the south of the Gas Works site, p.a. 2024/3497) is significantly diminished now that the “massively predominant” Gasworks buildings will largely obscure views from Swandon Way.

This fundamental change in context was predicted during last year CHAC’s meeting, as Mr. Catto conceded that ten stories was “probably not too bad” compared to what will stand in the background if the Gasworks scheme is approved.

This cascading effect extends beyond just height and massing concerns to issues like land assembly, transport capacity, and infrastructure provisions. Having established that over-development, fragmented land ownership and accessibility challenges were not barriers to approving the Gasworks site, the council faces significant challenges in maintaining that these same factors should prevent approval in proximity.

The approval of the larger Gasworks development has essentially reset the development standards for the area. The planning system depends on the consistent application of rules. Once an exception is made, it weakens the council’s ability to enforce those same policies elsewhere.

This is not a new concern for Wandsworth councillors. Conservative members have already felt the impact of earlier decisions along York Road when they tried to object to an application in August 2022. During the Planning Application Committee, Ms Jenifer Jackson, Assistant Director Planning & Transport Strategy, commented that officers would find it “very difficult to substantiate any harm resulting from the increase of size“, given the scale of developments already approved in the area.

• Read: Co-living replaced by normal residential tenure but still more than 23 storeys for 57 Lombard Road

Developers can now reasonably argue that refusing their application would constitute unequal treatment. This is particularly relevant for Armoury Way, which faces many of the same constraints as the Gasworks site but proposes less intensive development.

The breach of planning policies at the Gasworks site effectively resets the baseline for acceptable development throughout the Wandle Delta area, making previously unacceptable proposals now appear reasonable by comparison.

Labour and Conservatives, the two sides of the same coin

When Simon Hogg, the current Labour leader of the Council, was in the opposition, he criticised the Conservative Council for the way they dismissed planning rules. In autumn 2021, during the full Council meeting, he mentioned the open letter from societies and community groups denouncing the way planning decisions frequently breached local and national policies and guidelines.

• Read  our article in 2014: David Cameron is told that Wandsworth Council’s planning procedures and ‘localism’ practice have failed

In December of the same year, he said: “inappropriate development has gone too far in Wandsworth, it’s out of balance.” He added: “Our planning system has to be transparent, it has to be honest and it has to listen to the voices of local people”

Is it just cynicism? Those who thought that planning considerations would be different under a Labour administration have all reasons to be disappointed. It seems a continuity of the previous administration, just the different parties playing different sides.

“I just think it’s a joke really and I can completely understand how the public lose faith in the Council when we come forward with policy big strong important policies – we’re not talking about little details here – and then completely override it when we think it suits us to do something appropriate or the developer thinks we can we can get away with it”

During the meeting last month, Cllr Tony Belton acknowledged that when he was in the opposition he was making the same remarks as the Conservatives currently. But now he is in the majority, chairing the committee:

“I find it peculiar because of known positions I’ve taken for years and you two in the front there particularly you’ll know about it and also the positions you’ve taken in the past on many occasion. How many times I’ve sat and heard you say these are just guidelines … I can barely count and they’ve been used as guidelines” justified Belton. Cllr Humphreys interjected: “It’s your turn now councillor Belton”.

Is the chair’s role a reason to think differently? Cllr Belton certainly seems to think so—he believed there was justification for breaching planning rules in the case of the Gasworks site. Does that suggest there are no longer meaningful differences between Labour and the Conservatives when it comes to development?

Labour Cllr Jamie Colclough was candid enough to admit, “I didn’t get elected to support a 29-storey tower.” Yet, on 27 March, he did exactly that. Perhaps he will oppose the 34-storey proposal at Battersea Bridge that comes before the committee this month. But once trust is broken, it can be difficult—if not impossible—to repair.

“Call me old-fashioned but I believe promises should be kept,” said Paul Kohler, the Libdems MP for Wimbledon, talking about another very controversial approved development in Wimbledon park.

As Councillor Hugh Byrne once remarked, they’ve “let the genie out of the bottle”, and—rather like toothpaste—it’s nearly impossible to put it back in. Despite a shift to a Labour majority in the Council since spring 2022, many residents feel that little has changed when it comes to the approval of controversial planning applications. The new administration appears just as willing as its predecessors to set aside the Council’s own planning policies when convenient. The roles may have changed—what was once the Conservatives waving applications through is now Labour—but the outcome remains much the same. Plus ça change…

You can watch the full debate (no cut except for the break) at Wandsworth Planning Application Committee on March 27th below.