Talk:List of tallest buildings in the United Kingdom

Tagged as out of date, July 2010
As other editors have pointed out, there are a number of buildings missing from the list- I'll try to update at a more convenient time.--Pondle (talk) 00:07, 18 July 2010 (UTC)

Criteria for inclusion
This article ranks the tallest continuously inhabited buildings in the UK (skyscrapers) - buildings with numerous stories. The likes of Emley Moor transmitting station and the Spinnaker Tower have been removed as they do not adhere to this, they are free-standing structures/towers that should only be included in the article List of tallest structures in the United Kingdom. The difference between a skyscraper and general manmade structure has been severely misunderstood here. Similar examples to this are the CN Tower NOT being included in the article List of tallest buildings in Canada and the Fernsehturm Berlin NOT being included in the article List of tallest buildings in Germany. Stevvvv4444 (talk) 15:29, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Tallest On Hold Buildings
Just wondered if It would be OK to take the Buildings that are on hold from the underconstruction table and create a new table called tallest on hold buildings, simply because about half of those underconstruction are on hold, do you think this would be OK, I will make the changes next saturday if it is OK. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Guyb123321 (talk • contribs) 14:39, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Before Any LARGE edit's please discuss here
Just a quick reminder that before any large edits there should be a brief discussion here, and also if you are going to make a large edit, check that it works before leaving, if you dont think you will have time to edit all at once then wait till you do or edit in sandbox, thanks, GuyB Guyb123321 (talk) 16:45, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Tallest inhabited buildings, surely?
I assume that this article was the source of the "information" that Midland Grand Hotel, and then the Royal Liver Building, were when constructed the tallest buildings in the UK. However Salisbury Cathedral is taller than either, and was completed in 1258. I have deleted the "tallest" claims from the St. Pancras and Liver Building articles, but I expect that there are more such.

With careful reading, I see that this article covers inhabited buildings only. It is not surprising that editors fail to notice this when adding to other articles. So, could the "inhabited" bit be made much clearer? Maproom (talk) 19:10, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

Incidentally – I wonder how you define "inhabited" so as to include the Liver Building (offices), but not a cathedral. Both are used by thousands of people a day, but rarely slept in. Still, that is not my main concern. Maproom (talk) 19:13, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

The Heron
The Heron (112m) is now topped out Guyb123321 (talk) 22:18, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Timeline of tallest buildings
There reads: This list ranks the tallest storied buildings in the United Kingdom throughout history, excluding free standing clock towers, church spires and other such structures.

Free standing clock towers and church spires are excluded but "Post Office Tower" is not? What is the logic behind that? 85.217.21.121 (talk) 17:40, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The Post Office Tower was intended to be occupied by people almost all the way to the top, unlike church spires and clock towers. Maproom (talk) 17:52, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Changes to under construction buildings......

 * Beetham Tower, London now under costruction see http://www.skyscrapernews.com/news.php?ref=3225
 * "Scalpel" tower approved, construction due to start later this year http://skyscrapernews.com/news.php?ref=3228
 * The Pride (skyscraper) has undergone some revisions such as a height increase and the new building will need to be approved by the planners before anything can happen see http://www.out-law.com/en/articles/2013/january/chalegrove-submits-75-storey-docklands-tower-plans/
 * 150 Stratford High Street has now topped out
 * The Heron (112m) has now also topped out
 * Pioneer Point North topped out in spring 2012 and actually finished months ago Guyb123321 (talk) 21:40, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of tallest bridges in the world which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 13:31, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Difference between Buildings and Structures
A building is commonly agreed to be have habitable floors encompassing the entire height of the structure and is designed with human occupancy in mind. A structure is a means to an end (i.e. communications, observation towers etc.) and does not include habitable floors for the entirety of its height or is designed for continuous human occupancy. It is quite clear structures such as the Spinnaker Tower, Brighton Observation Tower and BT Towers can be classified as a structure - not a building so please stop adding these to the Tallest Buildings list. Thank you. Stevo1000 (talk) 00:09, 14 March 2016 (UTC)

BT Tower
This is listed on "Timeline of tallest buildings" but not "Tallest existing buildings", are we including this or not? 81.103.125.122 (talk) 10:02, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Nicknames
What is everyone's thoughts on nicknames placed below the names of some of the towers (and/or previous names)? I was thinking something like this? It would include stuff like the "fun" nicknames like Cheesegrater, Walkie Talkie, Razor etc. but also former names like King's Reach Tower (for SouthbankTower), Natwest Tower (for Tower42) etc. BenBezuidenhout (talk) 12:34, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

BT Towers
Not sure the Birmingham BT Tower (beautiful though it is) belongs on this list?

Someone also recently changed this sentence in the article introduction to include it, which renders it incorrect (my emphasis on the changed part): "As of December 2017 there are 73 habitable buildings in the UK at least 100 metres (330 ft) tall, 59 of them in London, four in Manchester, three in Birmingham, two in Leeds and one each in Brighton and Hove, Liverpool, Portsmouth, Sheffield and Swansea (the only structure outside England)."

I can only see 2 x 100m plus habitable towers in Birmingham at the moment. That BT Tower is not habitable, its intention was never to be used for homes or offices (unlike the London BT Tower that has offices in the lower portion, so should stay on this86.11.211.84 (talk) 09:24, 31 December 2017 (UTC) list).
 * The London BT Tower should definitely be on the list. It is classed as a "building" for the first 177m. Then there is a 12m antenna on the top which is the only bit that does not count.QuintusPetillius (talk) 20:12, 26 August 2021 (UTC)

Tallest buildings by city
Is there are logic for the cities chosen on this list? Coventry, Aberdeen, Swansea, Brighton and Hove, Plymouth, Middlesbrough, Swindon, Reading and Blackpool are all bigger settlements with taller buildings than Preston. Marky 17:11, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Update required
This list is well out of date, going by List of tallest buildings and structures in London. QuintusPetillius (talk) 20:12, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Location of Buildings
Someone has gone through and edited in "Isle of Dogs" as the "County" for buildings in Greater London. This is clearly wrong, there is no such county, Borough or unitary authority called "Isle of Dogs". It is a district within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. If that person wishes to add a "District" column, that may we be of use and sensible (and should be filled in for all the entries), but until then Isle of Dogs needs to be removed from these lists, sorry. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.8.26.61 (talk) 10:05, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

Height of 110 Bishopsgate / Heron Tower / Salesforce Tower
While going through and updating references, I found that not only does this building have multiple names, it also has multiple different architectural heights. Emporis evidently said 230 m at one point but now says 242 m, while CTBUH says 230 m. This difference actually affects its position on the list, from 5th to 3rd, and means the ranking of tallest buildings in London/UK is inconsistent across Wikipedia. Any idea what's behind the difference, and how we should resolve it? the wub "?!"  00:30, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Originally called Heron Tower but now known as Salesforce Tower for sponsorship reasons. it has always been 230 metres tall to its architectural tip. It is 202 metres tall to the roof and has a 28 metre tall spire on top. it has not suddenly grown an extra 12 metres in height. almost all sources state it is 230 metres tall. I would not trust the emporis source as it often gets building heights wrong. CTBUH is the international regulator for building heights and they are the reputed organisation which designates the tallest building in the world title. it is a far more reliable source. the building is 230 metres tall Barlow95 (talk) 22:02, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

having done some extensive research, it appears that the 242 metre height was the initial proposal when the building got planning permission. however there was a height reduction to 230 metres for the final completed building. Barlow95 (talk) 22:17, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

What is a city?
Several editors have made edits treating Greater Manchester in the same way as Greater London was being treated in this article, as a 'City Region', merging figures for all boroughs into one. These have been reverted by one editor effectively trying to impose a definition based on city limits...except for London where Greater London is being treated as a city region. This is being done based on spurious appeals to ITL/NUTS and 'sui generis', which do not in fact have any bearing on city status in the UK. There is no reason in UK law to treat Greater London as a city region and not Greater Manchester (or West Midlands/Merseyside etc for that matter). I personally do not care too much which definition is used, city limits or city region, but there has been no consensus about this mixing of definitions and, as below, and I find the arguments being made as to why any areas should be treated differently are dubious if not downright incorrect according to UK law. If we treat other areas as being based on city limits then the same should apply to London.

I'll deal with some of the more substantive edit comments by the editor in question;


 * 'Unnecessary edit with no rationale. Edits inconsistent with page format. UNDUE/non-NPOV: Greater Manchester - Manchester and Salford are correctly listed as separate cities/metro boroughs. Term ‘Greater London’ unecessary - GL is now GOR, known simply as London.'

When referring to cities, Greater London and the City of London are two different things. Greater London is not a city in UK law, the Greater London boroughs are not cities, nor are they legally part of the City of London (or Westminster). There are two cities in the London conurbation, the City of London and the City of Westminster, as listed in the List of cities in the United Kingdom. There are two cities in the Greater Manchester conurbation, the City of Manchester and the City of Salford.

Greater London as a city called simply 'London', does not legally exist. It isn't the equivalent to the Cities of Manchester and Salford either, which this edit implied. However this city region theory of a city, covering a wider conurbation rather than just arbitrary city limits, is commonplace, and seeing how Greater London was being treated as a metro city in this article, other editors naturally extended this to Greater Manchester, where a similar metro definition makes sense.

But you can't have your cake and eat it; if we want to 'correctly' separate the Cities of Manchester and Salford based on city limits instead of merging both into the Greater Manchester conurbation then we should do the same for the Cities of London and Westminster, and separate them from the rest of the Greater London conurbation.

As I've said, whichever way we define city, either as broader 'metros' or as narrowly-defined city limits, I don't mind, but I strongly have a problem with imposing a city limits criterion for certain areas, but then arbitrarily not using that definition for one particular area. I also strongly dispute the claim there is any basis in current UK law to treat them differently.

As for GOR? Do you mean Government Office of the Regions? The administrative divisions that were abolished in 2011? Not that they ever had any role in the definition of a city anyway.


 * 'Again, no. Edits are inconsistent with page format, which lists constructions by city. Term Greater Manchester is UNDUE/non-NPOV: Manchester marketing does not trump ONS datasets / NUTS regions and nomenclatures.'


 * 'No, because this is inconsistent with the page format and the nomenclatures used by the UK Government and elsewhere in Wikipedia. London is an ITL(NUTS)1 City Region; Greater Manchester is an ITL(NUTS)2 Metropolitan County. It does not matter where in Salford the buildings are located, they are located in Salford. Smethwick is not Birmingham; Bradford is not Leeds; Salford is not Manchester.'

Appeals to International Territorial Levels are irrelevant to this issue, they aren't what you seem to think they are and you are misusing them as some kind of legal definition of a city region. For a start, NUTS 1 does not define city regions, as a cursory glance of the NUTS 1 map will demonstrate.



Scotland, Catalonia + Valencia + Balearics, Bavaria etc etc, do not in any sensible way form city regions.

The ITL\NUTS regions are a statistical mapping tool designed to provide relatively similarly-populated (size, demographics etc) regions for statistical analysis, often - but not always - with some reference to administrative boundaries, that is all. It just happens that in some countries like the UK and France with large capital cities it made sense for one of the larger tier 1 areas areas to map onto the existing metro administration. For cities that don't have as large populations their 'City Regions" will tend to be mapped to the smaller tier 2.

But NUTS has no legal role in defining what a city region is, it's just a statistical tool. Both Greater London and Greater Manchester long predate NUTS. That one area is NUTS 1 and another NUTS2 has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are a 'City Region" or not, something that has no legal definition in the UK anyway. All being in Tier 1 means is Greater London is more populated. Being a NUTS 2 region doesn't mean Greater Manchester does not exist - Salford is still in Greater Manchester, and it doesn't make Greater Manchester not a City Region.

As for the last line, Croydon is not in a city called London either.


 * 'Edits inconsistent with page format. UNDUE/non-NPOV: Re: Greater Manchester - Manchester and Salford are correctly listed as separate cities/metro boroughs per six UK metro regions (WM, GM, WY, SY, Mers, T&W). London is a sui generis region; the City of London is a sui generis city and county with no equivalent in the UK'

You can quote 'sui generis' until you are blue in the face, but what does actually it mean in this context? It does not mean Greater London is a City, as it has never been conferred city status. It does not mean that Greater London is officially defined as a city region, any more than Greater Manchester is. All 'sui generis' means is that it is a distinct legal entity, it does not define what that legal entity is. The City of London is 'sui generis' in its peculiar legal rights, that does not mean it isn't a city in the same way as Manchester or Salford. You are stretching 'sui generis' to mean something it doesn't in this context.

If you want to treat London differently to Manchester and Salford you are going to have to come up with actual evidence that Greater London is a city in UK law. Or that UK law defines Greater London as a City Region but not Greater Manchester. The trouble is there simply isn't any such evidence. So if we are defining cities based on city status I will continue to revert any edits that incorrectly refer to Greater London a city, it isn't. ChiZeroOne (talk) 17:58, 3 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I will revert in due course. BlueandWhiteStripes (talk) 19:41, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, to be clear, Wikipedia is built on the principle of consensus, not on legal definitions. This is not a courtroom, nobody is on trial here and nobody, least of all me, is compelled to produce evidence “in law” to refute your point of view. That is not how Wikipedia works so quit your trainee lawyer grandstanding.

With that said, I will address a number of the points you raise.

Firstly, the City of London is both city and ceremonial county and is therefore a sui generis entity. It is one of the oldest self-governing municipal democracies in the world and is, to all intents and purposes, an autonomous jurisdiction. You should be aware that use of the term sui generis is commonplace in a number of sectors including local government, so my use of it is perfectly correct. The relevance to this page, which I believe is what we are discussing, is that the City of London has no direct comparison in the United Kingdom, not in Greater Manchester nor anywhere else, and therefore cannot be categorised using the standard nomenclatures. For this reason it appears in the listings in the column marked ‘County’.

Whilst there may be an argument for it also appearing in the corresponding column marked ‘City’, you appear to be arguing something different, for reasons that are not immediately apparent.

Secondly, you appear to have confused yourself in respect of Greater London. Greater London is the administrative area governed by the Greater London Authority. Nowhere have I stated that the terms Greater London and London should be conflated on this page, which is why the term ‘Greater London’ appears in the listings in the column marked ‘County’, along with the six equivalent, albeit smaller Metropolitan counties of England: the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, Merseyside, South Yorkshire and Tyne & Wear. This is not only in keeping with United Kingdom Government’s nomenclatures but is, I would have thought, eminently sensible, since it groups like with like and links each to the relevant Wikipedia page in a consistent fashion.

Thirdly, your suggestion that the government statistics which define local and regional administration in the United Kingdom have no bearing on how we define our metropolitan areas is absurd. Legal status is not the preeminent consideration here, if indeed it is a consideration at all; people reading these pages want to know how cities and regions of similar sizes and statures compare, and this is achieved using statistical evidence: populations, administrative boundaries and so forth. Without clear categorisations, readers unfamiliar with the geography of the country could easily mistake, for example, the City of London for Greater London, which by your own admission would be a shortcoming. Therefore, ITL statistics, amongst others, are very relevant; more so, I would proffer, than any extraneous bit of legalese you might be able to dig out.

Which brings us to the nub of the issue. It appears, despite your protestations to the contrary, that your main concern is not for the page to equate Greater Manchester to Greater London, because it already does this, but for it to equate “Greater Manchester” to “London”.

The cynic in me says this is “little city syndrome” rearing its ugly head, but regardless of your personal grievances the approach you are advocating is problematic for several reasons.

The first is that it has led inexorably to your frankly bizarre assertion that London should be treated as a polycentric non-entity. This is an unreasonable position to take and one that is clearly at odds with the Wikipedia community.

I refer you to the following WP:POL subsection:

Not contradict each other. “The community's view cannot simultaneously be "A" and "not A". When apparent discrepancies arise between pages, editors at all the affected pages should discuss how they can most accurately represent the community's current position and correct all the pages to reflect the community's view.”

Hence, if you, or anybody else for that matter, wish to pursue the line of argument that London should be disregarded as a unified ‘city’, you will need to petition the other relevant pages, including: London, to reconcile the discrepancies on those pages before you can apply it to this one.

Best of luck with that.

A related issue is one of received wisdom. The City of London and its 33 boroughs form an integrated city and have done since the passing of the London Government Act in 1963. In fact, the terms Greater London], [[London Region and London tend to be used interchangeably. Essentially, their meaning is one and the same.

Whether you like it or not, the same cannot be said for Manchester, or indeed for any of the other similarly-sized metropolitan county in the country.

To take an example, if you were to ask someone who lives in Wembley where they live, they would typically reply “North West London”.

If you asked someone from Bolton where they live, would they reply “North West Manchester”? No, because received wisdom suggests that North West Manchester would be somewhere around, what, Crumpsall?

On the flip side of this particular coin, the matter of perception. At least one editor has claimed that the buildings in Salford are actually in Manchester city centre, which is obviously not the case. If I were to walk, for example, across the Tyne Bridge to the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Arts, I would have walked from Newcastle to Gateshead. Suppose, later this year, a proposal is submitted for a tall tower adjacent to the BALTIC Centre. Would we then be compelled to classify this proposal as Newcastle, simply because a small cartel of editors from Manchester cannot cope with the reality that their city, which is barely even Birmingham, is not London?

In short, there appears to be a cognitive dissonance involved in the way people from Manchester regard their city which, without meaning to sound flippant, is not the rest of the country’s problem. It should certainly not be taking precedence on this page.

However, by continuing along this track and persisting with your edit war, not only are you frustrating the editors who have spent long hours compiling up-to-date material for the entire country, but you are also damaging the usability of the page for its readers. You will note, for example, that the figures in the “Tall Buildings by City” tables no longer tally with the listings. Similarly, you will note that erroneously conflating Manchester with Greater Manchester makes a mess of the listings grid and the page links therein.

This is not the case with the term London.

Now, I am going to revert your edit, pending reconciliation of the London pages as mentioned above. If you have a shred of civility about you, it will be the last time I have to do it. BlueandWhiteStripes (talk) 01:14, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

The problem here is you are combining two different strategies to try and get what you want, which appears to be to treat London as a conurbation or 'city region', but all other cities by strict local authority boundaries.

There is no good justification for this. When challenged that the statistical and legal terms you've thrown about don't imply what you seem to think they mean, you have now changed tack to what you 'feel', and that other conurbations don't 'feel' like cities to you in the same way as London. Sorry, that isn't good enough for a Wikipedia article. Readers don't care what you 'feel' is Birmingham or Manchester, they certainly don't care for imagined "where do you live?" vox pops, nor your dismissive attitude to cities outside London.

If you want to use local authority boundaries, to be consistent you need to do the same with London and list the City of London and City Westminster separately and not include towers outside these cities. If you want to use conurbations, either built-up areas or those covered by city region administrations, use conurbations for all of them.

Instead you are using local authority boundaries for all cities except London. With London you are instead using a city region definition, relying heavily on the article 'London', and defining that as the 'city' in this list article. Even the note on the first line of the London article points out this isn't a city under UK definitions, so why are you mixing it up with local authorities? The London article has a lot of problems though, not least because the figures (population, area etc) are clearly directly lifted from the Greater London region boundaries, so they are effectively the same thing. In effect that article is just claiming that 'London' is Greater London. These articles should really be merged, indeed there have been many attempts to merge them. The best argument against has not been that they aren't substantially the same subject, just that they are too long to merge.

In this article you are equating this 'London' city region, which it turns out is in fact essentially identical in size to Greater London, with local authorities like the City of Birmingham. That is bizarre, Greater London is not a local authority area – it is among other things a collection of local authority areas covered by a city region administration. Local authorities are not its equivalents. The closest equivalents elsewhere would be city region administrations, such as Combined Authorities.

What you are doing is trying to have your cake and eat it, by appealing to various methods to claim London is 'special' and that somehow allows you to compare the whole of Greater London to individual local authorities elsewhere. ChiZeroOne (talk) 17:21, 10 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Can I give one solution to this discussion. Completely remove "county" as a column, as it serves no real purpose at all. London is an odd place in terms of administration, so instead of "what is or is not a city", just provide what is commonly used name. So the columns would be:


 * Rank, Official Name, Alternative name, Function, Location, Image ... This is similar to List of tallest buildings in the United States. So buildings in London would be in London, while building is Manchester would be in Manchester in this article.


 * I would also suggest that List of tallest buildings in London would have more detail than in this article, so it would have columns of Borough and Location. Therefore One Canada Square for example, would be in the Borough of Tower Hamlets and the location would be Canary Wharf etc. What do all editors think of this possible solution?  Seth Whales   talk  10:42, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * The issue is how the whole article including the text, not just the list columns, is defining the geographical area of cities for the purposes of comparison. Comparing Greater London to the City of Manchester, or City of Birmingham, Liverpool etc is mixing two completely different types of geographies for no good reason. Whether you call the column 'County' or 'Location' makes no difference if you are still comparing Greater London (a collection of local authorities, and a proxy for London's sprawling conurbation) to individual local authorities elsewhere, not their own conurbations or city region administrations like Liverpool City Region Combined Authority etc.
 * This is important for this list because it is making claims about how many buildings are in particular cities, but then slices up every other conurbation in the UK except London. For example a building in Birkenhead, directly opposite Liverpool city centre, in the Wirral local authority wouldn't be counted as being in Liverpool in this article, despite functionally being part of the same city and being under the same top-tier government administration. But buildings in Canary Wharf, in the local authority area of Tower Hamlets (which isn't a city either) gets lumped in with London by extending the term 'city' to the whole of Greater London. This distinction becomes especially egregious in Greater Manchester where the city centre sprawls over three boroughs. All the completed tall buildings in this list under Salford lie within the inner ring road which surrounds the core of Manchester City Centre. The Salford skycraper in the list (Cortland at Colliers Yard) is located a just few hundred yards from Manchester Cathedral. They are part of the same conurbation, the Greater Manchester Built-up Area, and the local authorities they lie in are in the same top tier city region administrative area, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
 * The effect of using two different geographies like this article does is to attempt to mislead the reader by comparing apples and oranges.
 * ChiZeroOne (talk) 15:35, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * As I say "London is an odd place in terms of administration". It is clear what is the City of Manchester, City of Salford, City of Birmingham, and City of Liverpool etc. However, no one can compare these cities with the tiny City of London, which only has a population of just 8,583 - crazy but true. However the BBC says that "London is the UK's largest city and Birmingham is its second largest city." Why make things so complicated? Wikipedia editors just love a good old argument...I just roll my eyes. I move on. Seth Whales   talk  00:31, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Religious Buildings
What is the reasoning for the dismissal of religious buildings in this list. In what world is a cathedral any less an inhabited building than an office? And why would the BT Tower, which is by its very nature a communications tower and not a building be considered a building before cathedrals are? Religious buildings form by far the largest portion of the history of tall buildings in this country and it seems ridiculous to arbitrarily not include them in this list. Staruge (talk) 16:52, 16 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Salisbury Cathedral has a spire standing at 404 feet. It is absurd to disregard this. 31.94.12.73 (talk) 14:47, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

RfC about the use of different definitions of a city
Should this article use a consistent definition of which geographical areas constitute a city?

Please see the "What is a city?" section above for more detail. ChiZeroOne (talk) 17:32, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

One Canada Square
It lists "1990" as the year built" but it was actually completed in 1991. GabrielPenn4223 (talk) 21:36, 27 December 2023 (UTC)