Campaigners win High Court challenge over Holocaust memorial site

Campaigners have won their High Court bid to quash planning permission for a new national Holocaust memorial in a park outside Parliament.

The London Historic Parks and Gardens Trust is opposed to a new UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre being built in Victoria Tower Gardens, a small triangular Grade II-listed green space next to Westminster Abbey and the Palace of Westminster.

The charity brought a case against the Government, arguing the project is the “right idea, wrong place” and that the planning permission decision-making process was flawed.

At a hearing in February, the trust, whose challenge was opposed by ministers, claimed there was an “unlawful” approach to the consideration of alternative sites and highlighted the alleged impact the development might have on the heritage setting, including the Buxton Memorial which celebrates the abolition of slavery.

The trust’s lawyer, Richard Drabble QC, also said plans did not comply with a 1900 legal act affecting park land, whose requirements represented “a prohibition on using Victoria Tower Gardens as anything other than a garden open to the public”.

In a ruling issued on Friday, Mrs Justice Thornton said the trust’s case against the planning permission decision succeeded in relation to its arguments over the 1900 act.

The judge said the act “imposes an enduring obligation” to retain land “as a public garden and integral part of the existing Victoria Tower Gardens”.

She concluded: “Accordingly, the appropriate remedy is to quash the decision, so as to enable further consideration of the implications of the London County Council (Improvements) Act 1900 for the proposed scheme.”