Campaigners say there are environmental and location concerns about building a national holocaust memorial next to Parliament
(Picture: PA Media)Opponents of plans to build a £100 million Holocaust memorial and education centre in a Westminster park are mounting a High Court challenge, calling it “right idea, wrong place”.
Planning minister Chris Pincher gave the green light for a memorial next to the House of Parliament, in the historic Victoria Tower Gardens, with hopes of it opening in 2025.
While the news was welcomed by the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the location of the memorial in the small park by the River Thames has faced stiff opposition.
The London Historic Parks and Garden Trust is now bringing a legal challenge at the High Court, asking a judge to quash Mr Pincher’s decision to grant planning permission after a public inquiry.
Richard Drabble QC, representing the charity, said it “welcomes the principle of an appropriate memorial to the Holocaust” but challenge the inquiry conclusions on the loss of the park’s existing heritage.
“The problem they identify can be summed up in the phrase ‘right idea, wrong place’,” he said. “The proposed location for a project of this scale brings with it unavoidable objections.”
Westminster City Council is supporting the legal challenge and has said it would have rejected the planning permission bid if it had been left to local councillors to decide.
The charity objected at the planning inquiry, mounting arguments that the proposed memorial would cause “harm to heritage assets, harm to the character, amenity value and significance of Victoria Tower Gardens as a Registered Park and Garden, and harm to the mature trees surrounding the park”, said Mr Drabble.
He pointed out in written arguments the park is Grade II registered, within the Westminster Abbey and Parliament Square Conservation Area, and is already the setting for the Burghers of Calais sculpture by Auguste Rodin, the Buxton Memorial Fountain commemorating the emancipation of slaves in the British Empire, and the Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst Memorial.
“It is hard to think of a more sensitive area in terms of its cultural, historical and heritage significance,” he said.
He added the trust opposed the Holocaust memorial’s location because it is an “exceptionally serious intrusion into a green public open space of the highest heritage significance”.
The charity argues an alternative site at the Imperial War Museum was not given proper consideration by the planning inspector.
Stuart Andrew, who is now Minister of State for Housing, is opposing the legal challenge, and says his predecessor “undertook the heritage balance…and concluded that when the ‘very important public benefits’ which he had identified were weighed against the less than substantial harm to the significance of the designated heritage assets, ‘in each case the balance clearly and demonstrably weighs in favour of the proposals’.”
The planning inspector concluded the Imperial war Museum proposal “lacks a detailed scheme that would meet the core requirements” of the memorial and should be given “very limited” weight as a viable option.
The idea for a memorial was initiated by former Prime Minister David Cameron in 2013, with Sir David Adjaye eventually chosen to design the centre.
Holocaust survivors can be found on both sides of the argument on where the memorial should be located and the charity has pointed that many of its members are Jewish.
Mrs Justice Thornton will hear the High Court challenge on Tuesday and Wednesday before coming to a decision.
