City council facing judicial review over decision to demolish brutalist office block
Birmingham City Council has been threatened with a judicial review of its decision to approve the demolition of an iconic brutalist building in the city centre, amid claims the local authority misinterpreted local policy concerning the carbon impact of demolishing a building.
The claim is being brought by a number of local groups, including Brutiful Birmingham, Birmingham Modernist Society, the Twentieth Century Society, and Birmingham's Zero Carbon House and Birmingham Fair Housing Campaign.
In February this year Birmingham's planning committee gave the go-ahead for the demolition of the curving brutalist structure known as 'The Ringway'.
In place of the six-storey 1960s concrete office block, developers plan to build a 48-storey residential tower.
However, the claimants said the decision would mean the loss of a "beacon to the skill of the Birmingham Modernist architects who rebuilt the city after the war".
They also said that demolishing the structure would have an avoidable environmental impact and undermine local democracy.
In a pre-action protocol letter sent on 25 April, the claimants have advanced the following two grounds:
- The planning officer's report materially misinterpreted local policy and incorrectly advised members there was no policy basis that would allow or encourage the consideration of embodied carbon calculations when assessing the proposed development.
- The reasoning in the planning officer's report when addressing proposed alternatives to the proposed development is inadequate and unintelligible to the extent that it gives rise to substantial doubt about the reasons for material conclusions.
Estelle Dehon KC and Rowan Clap of Cornerstone Barristers are acting for the claimants.
Birmingham City Council has declined to comment on the potential litigation.
Adam Carey
