Bevis Marks breathes sigh of relief as tower plan rejected
City of London turns down bid just an hour before Shabbat in dramatic debate
Jenni Frazer is a freelance journalist
For the second time in two years, a bid to build a looming tower block, which would have overshadowed Britain’s 300-year-old Bevis Marks synagogue, has been rejected by the City of London’s planning committee, this time by 14 votes to eight.
But the turning down of the proposal for a 43-storey building ran right to the wire. Bevis Marks supporters told Jewish News that the committee was asked not to consider the bid on a Friday, because of how early Shabbat began on December 13; and, when that was refused, a request that the Bevis Marks bid should be first on the agenda, for the same reason, was also turned down.
So the more than two-hour long debate in the ornate surroundings of Guildhall, did not begin until just after 12 noon, with Shabbat due to begin at 3.36 pm. The case officer for the City of London, Anna Tastoglou, presented the bid on behalf of the developers — the same developers whose proposal for a 47-storey building was previously turned down by the powerful planning committee.
The proposal — which it was claimed would provide 2,400 office jobs — also contained a variety of community “sweeteners” such as two “multi-faith centres” and an external climbing wall at the tower, sited over three buildings, which would be demolished, next to the synagogue. One of the buildings is a Grade 2 Heritage building, Holland House.
Bevis Marks campaigners repeatedly told the City authorities that the project would effectively cut out both daylight and sunlight to the synagogue and its courtyard, and make it difficult to see the moon on occasions when special prayers had to be recited. The developers insisted that their surveys found that the impact of the tower on the synagogue would be “negligible” or “minor”, a conclusion which was successfully challenged by the synagogue,
A line-up of objectors — there were more than 1,000 objections lodged on the City’s planning website, including the Chief Rabbi and historian Sir Simon Schama — were invited to address the committee. They were headed by Sir Michael Bear, a former Lord Mayor of the City of London and himself a developer. In an impassioned speech, he called the tower block bid “audacious” and spoke of the potential damage, not only to Bevis Marks but also to the nearby Tower of London.
The synagogue, he told the planning committee, was “a unique piece of architecture”, a living centre of Jewish worship and the only such non-Christian place in the City. He added that the idea that the City would contradict its own policy of refusing planning permission to tall buildings in a Heritage Conservation Area — Bevis Marks has been in such an area since January 2024 — was “Orwellian double-think”.
Sir Michael was followed by solicitor Henrietta Gordon, who is not Jewish, and who has worked in the City for many years. She compared the synagogue, opened in 1701, with St Paul’s Cathedral, opened in 1710, and asked why Bevis Marks could not be afforded the same level of planning protection as St Paul’s. She also, to the later anger of some committee members, suggested that granting planning permission could be a breach of human rights and equality laws, and that an element of antisemitism might be involved. This was furiously rejected by planning officers.
It was left to the synagogue’s Rabbi Shalom Morris to spell out exactly what the impact would be on his congregation’s ability to worship — the tower, he said, would effectively block out the night sky for six months of the year, “leaving us in a perpetual cloudy evening”, and that the blocking of daylight into the synagogue would reduce it to “a perpetual winter morning”. Rabbi Morris also said that Bevis Marks’ own studies had indicated that the light available to the synagogue would “plummet” — a word with which the developers profoundly disagreed.
For their part, the developers, whose spokesman was Alexander Morris, chose all their supporters from social community projects who would have benefited from allocated space in the tower block. Their “big gun” was the Olympic medallist Tessa Sanderson, who backed a group called the “Museum of Diversity” which she said would help young and disadvantaged people in the area.
The committee members asked searching questions of the developers and the case officers, including asking if they had had a Jewish consultant to explain the religious concerns. Alexander Morris said he had “tried to keep the door open” for dialogue between the developers and the synagogue, but admitted that he had not had a meeting this year until mid-November.
One committee member put it bluntly: why did the benefits of the tower outweigh the damage to the synagogue? And, given the concerns of the synagogue, why had it not been possible to design a building which did not affect Bevis Marks? Another raised the question of the previous rejection two years ago, asking what had changed in the developers’ plans since then.
Finally, just an hour before Shabbat was due to begin, chairman Shriven Joshi — who announced he would vote in support of the tower proposal — put the bid to the vote. The developers’ plan was rejected by 14 votes to eight, and some of the Bevis Marks campaigners burst into tears of relief.
Rabbi Morris said: “We are very pleased that the City of London Planning Committee has refused planning permission for a speculative 43-storey office tower at 31 Bury Street and rejected the flawed and inaccurate advice presented by the City Planning Officer to grant permission for a tall building in a Conservation Area, contrary to the adopted Local Plan.
“Now that this totally inappropriate tower proposal has been rejected for the second time in two years, we urge the applicant to abandon this project in its current form and not to lodge an appeal, which, we are advised by Lord Banner KC, has little chance of succeeding.”
Jewish News approached the developers’ spokesman, Alexander Morris, to ask if there would indeed be an appeal, but he refused to speak.
The planning committee, meanwhile, is due to spell out its reasons for rejecting the proposal, at a separate meeting.
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