The Daily Express owner Richard Desmond is to build a secondary school as part of a 1m sq ft redevelopment of his old Westferry printworks site in London’s upmarket Docklands area.
The school, which could become an academy, will sit among a mixed commercial and residential development comprising nine towers of up to 30 floors, containing 722 homes, retail and office space, cafes, restaurants and public open spaces.
Boris Johnson approved the development in one of his last acts as London mayor, after seizing control of planning authority from Tower Hamlets council. Building the school is a condition of the planning permission.
There is a chance the new school could be become an academy. If it does, according to the Times, it is understood that the media billionaire, who once owned niche interest adult magazines, wants to call it the Richard Desmond academy.
Market experts have said that Desmond stands to make a fortune off the development, which could be worth as much as £750m when it is completed. He already owns the freehold on the site – for which he is estimated to have spent about £30m – and construction costs are expected to be between £250m and £300m.
Johnson seized control of planning authority for the site in February and was granted permission in April. It was initially rejected by Tower Hamlets for failing to include enough affordable housing and would not achieve a mixed and balanced community. Just 11% of the housing proposed, which is close to the Canary Wharf financial district, is classed as affordable.
The mayor told the council that he was calling in the application because it had “fallen short of its housing delivery target” and “the council has identified an established need for additional secondary school places in the borough”. Despite that, Tower Hamlets has maintained its opposition to the scheme, publishing a report in early April, before permission was granted, saying it had resolved to reject the application if it could.
According to promotional literature, over 1 hectare of the site has been provided for a new secondary school of two to four storeys, providing 1,200 pupil places. It obliquely addresses the rumour that Desmond would want to run the school as an academy. “Any decisions regarding the proposed operators of the school will be for the London borough of Tower Hamlets and the Department of Education to resolve, and are beyond the remit of a planning application,” it says.
Among the development’s most determined opponents have been local sailing enthusiasts, who say the new highrises will ruin wind conditions around their club, which is adjacent to the development site.
Benjamin Davis, water operations manager the Docklands Sailing and Watersports Centre, said: “It’s going to reduce the wind that we receive, and it’s going to distort is as well. We are supportive of development happening there, but this is the end of a two-year planning process that they have gone through, and throughout that they haven’t considered any alternatives.”
DP9, Desmond’s planning adviser, which originally asked Johnson to take control of the planning process, has negotiated a mitigation package of £546,000 for the club. But Davis said he was still disappointed with the outcome. “They need to fund a mitigation package, without regard for the fact that you can’t buy wind,” Davis said. “So we have got to adapt our operation. It’s really difficult for us.”
Davis’s biggest fear was that the change in wind conditions would put customers off coming to the club, which operates as a charity and provides subsidised sailing courses for disadvantaged young people. “We are not funded by anyone,” he said. “We have to find our own funds and if people don’t come down for sailing we don’t make any money through that, which means we can’t provide the youth activities we do in the summer. It’s disappointing but there doesn’t seem to be anything we can do.”
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