A disaster!

Published: 14 January, 2011

• AS yet a full planning agreement has not been reached for the memorial structure in the Green Park. 

It is earnestly to be hoped it never will; and that decency and caring will overcome misguided wilfulness of the Bomber Command team including their advisers. 

For 12 months, with the Friends of the Green Park and other intelligent and caring souls, I have tried to persuade and convince the authorities and Bomber Command Association to withdraw from causing irreparable harm to park. 

There is no reason for a building structure equivalent in length to nine double-decker buses to be built there. There is no justification whatsoever to allow such a disaster in the park. 

The authorities failed to exercise a duty of care or to follow English Heritage’s recommendation that where a historic site is under threat the planning authority should advise that an alternative site should be found. It is not as though there is not an appropriate site, on Victoria Embankment.

In the last year neither Bomber Command Association nor the architect have responded by any communication. They know that this is a fundamentally flawed decision made by Westminster’s planning committee who ignored the policies of both the Royal Parks and the council itself. These policies stated no more memorials in the area.

This is a mean and senseless mission, claimed to be in the name of remembrance and a memorial to those who had their lives cut short by Bomber Command, but by its monumentality and the negative outcome proposed it is not.

All should protest to Bomber Command and Westminster to ensure the park is not so violated.

TOM BALL
AADipl RIBA DipCD 
MRTPI (Rtd) FRSA, SW1