What we want

On the 22nd of October the Deputy Mayor Jules Pipe approved the Kensington Forum project aiming to replace the Holiday Inn Hotel in South Kensington with a building more than double the size of the existing hotel. We now ask the Secretary of State to consider the project and the reasons that motivated its thousand oppositions, and reject it. 

This project had over 900 letters of objection from local residents and was unanimously rejected by the RBKC in 2018. GLA approved it in 2019, but following a judiciary review Mayor Sadiq Khan accepted that granting the planning permission had been motivated by an improper purpose. The decision on this project was then sent to the Deputy Mayor who accepted it. 

We call for the Secretary of State to intervene in the Kensington-Forum-Hotel Project, approved by the Deputy Mayor of London, to assess the new building’s overall environmental and social impacts and weigh the costs and benefits of this project in good faith. We believe the cultural, economic, environmental and architectural impacts largely outweigh the applicants’ claimed benefits and should not be approved.  

Background

The Holiday Inn hotel is located on Ashburn Gardens, South Kensington and was built in 1972. It was originally intended to become London’s first big airport hotel but there was never any link established between the hotel and the air terminal. Back then it was also branded as a monstrosity. The existing building is 92 metres high, has 28 storeys, and contains 906 hotel rooms plus restaurants and a large number of conference rooms. 

The proposed project would replace all existing buildings and restore the garden square that has been partly fenced off, which some in the area initially welcomed. However, the price for restoring the garden square will be a much larger complex, consisting of two bulky towers on top of a large 7 storey building, called “the podium” by the developer, which will run all along Ashburn Place.

The total number of rooms and serviced flats let by the hotel will be 1,089, i.e. 340 more than what the current hotel has. In addition large conference rooms of up to 1,500 seats are also part of this project. 

Why do we want to stop it? 

The project offers some benefits, but these are undoubtedly outweighed by the wrongs and the hurt it will do to the area and its residents, in the short- and the long-term. 

-    The physical aspect of the existing tower has often been referred to as an eyesore, and yet the new projected building would be close to TWICE the current building volume. It has an oppressive bulk and mass. It will also be an eyesore in contrast with all the surrounding listed buildings and will severely impact the cultural heritage of the surrounding conservatory area. 

-     Fully affordable housings, from 42 in the initial proposal to 62 in the current project, are welcome but very poorly integrated. An open space on the top of a tower is due to be equipped with a playground, which is prone to fuel social division. Currently these units are “plug-ins” rather than integrated or core to the main design of the project. Furthermore, they have been added in exchange for additional guest accommodations.

-    The increase in the number of hotel rooms is unnecessary. The GLA’s forecast of the borough’s need for extra hotel rooms by 2041 is 150. A recently approved site in Notting Hill Gate has 175; the Harrington Hall hotel, currently undergoing refurbishment, will have 200 rooms. There is very clearly no need for the net increase of 183 proposed in this development. Furthermore the pandemic has affected travel habits which will be disrupted for decades. The whole project should be scaled down and more rooms should be converted into affordable/residential units. 

-    Economic activity and climate impacts of the project are based on vague and unrealistic assumptions. While guidelines on energy generation and efficiency are taken into account, the project does not contribute in any way to the objectives of net-zero carbon set by the UK government. The additional planned cooling will increase energy consumption per square foot in a way that means that any reduction of energy used to heat the building is made up by the extra energy used to cool it. In addition, there are numerous examples of new builds that end up being in part empty: as such they can be as energy efficient as they wish, their net carbon cost per capita is infinitely large due to the huge energy and carbon required to build it. A complete waste! 

-    The air pollution levels in the area of the site has for several years exceeded the legal limits in terms of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) according to the EU Directive 2008/50/EC. In 2017 (latest annual report available, published in November 2018 available on www.airqualityengland.co.uk on Cromwell Road, which is adjacent to the project, the NO2 average exceeds this legal limit by more than 36% (54.5 μg/m3), and on Earls Court Road, a road that will be used for the construction traffic and hotel use, the legal limits are exceeded by more than 73% (69.3 μg/m3). This area cannot cope with additional traffic and this would lead to a significant increase in air pollution and congestion in a system that is struggling already, with numerous health and well-being consequences. 

-     Traffic management is inappropriate: the hotel will only provide a few parking spaces. All the taxis and coaches will be idling in the streets and increasing traffic congestion. The newly created garden will be the new hotel’s traffic roundabout, worsening the air quality of the square and neighbourhood even further. 

-    Historic England’s Advice Note 4 on Tall Buildings issued in May this year states that the redevelopment of such sites should take the opportunity to produce a less harmful development.  This proposal is certainly not that!  The taller of the two towers, at 102 metres will be 10 metres taller than the existing tower.  

Do you want to do more?  

Email Felicity Buchan felicity.buchan.mp@parliament.uk confirming your support for an intervention by the Secretary of State along the following lines as soon as possible given that the deadline is only a matter of days away:

"Dear Ms Buchan

Kensington Forum Hotel Planning Application

This is to confirm I support the initiatives that have been or are being taken by RBKC, the Kensington Society, local Residents Associations, the Courtfield Ward Councillors and others who will be damaged by this terrible scheme (for which conditional approval was given by a Deputy Mayor of London (Jules Pipe) on 22 October 2020) inviting the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (The Rt Hon Mr Robert Jenrick MP) to issue a holding direction within 21 days of Mr Pipe's Decision and thereafter to direct a planning enquiry before a planning inspector to determine it.

I would be grateful if you do everything you can to support these initiatives".

More information

Kensington Society website. 

Judicial review of the first GLA ruling.