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Setback for National Holocaust Memorial as Royal Parks oppose plans
Body responsible for Victoria Tower Gardens says memorial will have 'significant harmful impacts' on park's 'character and function'
February 10, 2019 17:47
Body responsible for Victoria Tower Gardens says memorial will have 'significant harmful impacts' on park's 'character and function'
February 10, 2019 17:47Plans for a national Holocaust memorial have been dealt a blow after the body responsible for managing the site on which it is to be built objected to the project.
An application for the National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, in Victoria Tower Gardens, adjacent to the Houses of Parliament, is being considered by Westminster City Council.
Its location has attracted controversy, with a petition calling for the protection of the green space already signed by more than 11,000 members of the public.
The Royal Parks, which looks after Victoria Tower Gardens, said it opposed the application in a letter to the local authority this week, the Guardian reports.
It described the gardens as a “highly sensitive location in planning and heritage terms”, objecting to the proposal “given the impact it will have on a popular public amenity space in an area of the capital with few public parks”.
The £50 million project was initiated by the then-Prime Minister David Cameron and the winning design, produced by British architect David Adjaye and Israeli Ron Ara, was announced in 2017 by a panel of judges including Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, Holocaust survivor Sir Ben Helfgott and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
It will comprise a structure of 23 large bronze fins and a learning centre located underground.
The Royal Parks said it “strongly supports” the principle of a memorial to the Shoah, but the scale and design would have “significant harmful impacts” on the “character and function” of the park.
It warned the learning centre would “fundamentally change the historic character and associated vistas in and out of the park”.
It said: “The structure will dominate the park and eclipse the existing listed memorials which are nationally important in their own right.”
Opposition to the location of the National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre has primarily come from local residents, and a cross-party group of Jewish peers wrote a letter of objection to the Times newspaper last year.
Earlier this month nine rabbis, including Dayan Ivan Binstock of St John’s Wood United Synagogue and Rabbi Joseph Dweck, the senior rabbi of the Sephardi Community of the UK, wrote to Westminster City Council to defend the project.
The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, which has overseen the application, said: "No location in Britain is more suitable for the memorial than Victoria Tower Gardens, alongside Parliament where decisions in the lead up to, during and in the aftermath of the Holocaust were made, and amidst prominent memorials commemorating the struggle against slavery, inequality and injustice.
"The proposals have been developed with great sensitivity to the existing context and character of the Gardens – we will retain 93 per cent of the open public space, improve views over Parliament and the river Thames and provide a range of accessible seating and a new boardwalk along the embankment."
