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= Demolition of 'Fleet Street Estate' ('Salisbury Square Development') =  'Salisbury Square Development' is a planned project approved for planning on 22 April 2021 consisting of demolition of 6 historic buildings on Fleet Street, London, with further construction of 3 new buildings to house the City of London 'Justice Quarter': court rooms, legal chambers, police headquarters, and one commercial building.

Site Background
Fleet Street was the centre of national newspaper journalism and printing in the UK from the 18th century until the mid-1980s, and is one of London’s most historic thoroughfares, dating back to Roman times. The City of London’s Fleet Street Conservation Area Character Summary and Management Strategy Supplementary Planning Documents state that Fleet Street is one of London’s most characterful and important historic areas. Of particular note is the street’s complex and rich variety of buildings which illustrate unique elements from many periods of historic development right up to the modern day. By 1988, most national newspapers had moved away from Fleet Street to other parts of London, and the buildings they previously occupied were rented out to other businesses and banks.

The building highlighted by most historic organizations, the Chronicle House, was specifically built in 1924 to house the Daily Chronicle, once Britain’s best-selling newspapers at the time. Agence France-Presse was housed in the building until 2009.

The former newspaper office will be demolished along with two historic buildings on either side including 80-81, which housed the Daily Chronicle until 1930 and was most recently a Barclays Bank.

Proposal
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2. A police headquarters building (sui generis); and

3. A commercial building including offices, retail and cycle hub (Class E)" The Court and Police buildings are intended to have a 125-year life, therefore, they are designed for longevity. No frequent changes are expected for the Court Building, the Police Building and the Listed Building. The Commercial building is intended to have a 60-year life, will potentially accommodate multiple tenants, and is therefore more likely to have more internal alterations. All the buildings of the Proposed Development have followed principles of adaptable and flexible design in order to accommodate future changes.

Buildings on site to be demolished
1)     Nos. 72-78 Fleet Street, known as Chronicle House, is a classical style office building designed and built in 1924 for the Daily Chronicle newspaper publisher by Hebert, Ellis & Clarke using Portland stone and cast concrete.

2)     Nos. 80-81 Fleet Street is a neo-Baroque style former bank building (Barclays Bank) dating from 1924, built in Portland stone with grey granite cladding to designs by the architects C.J. Dawson, Son and Allardyce.

3)     No.1 Salisbury Square is a five storey early Georgian town house rebuilt in 1962 following war damage that illustrates the type of buildings that once surrounded Salisbury Square in the 18th and 19th centuries. Salisbury Square can be traced back to the medieval period as the former Great Court of the Bishop of Salisbury’s palace.

4)     No. 8 Salisbury Court is a narrow five storey former warehouse dating from the late 19th or early 20th century.

5)     Nos. 36-38 Whitefriars Street is a narrow fronted, early 20th century red brick office building in a plain classical style.

6)     No. 35 Whitefriars Street is a Queen Anne style public house designed by B. Wilkinson in 1895-97, who’s richly designed Victorian façade remains intact. The City of London extended the conservation area boundaries in 2007 to include both these buildings.

The listed 2-7 Salisbury Court building will be partially demolished and some of the facades will be retained.

Nos. 72-78 and Nos. 80-81 Fleet Street were proposed for listing in July 2020 by the Twentieth Century Society, but were rejected.

The Waithman obelisk on Salisbury Square, a listed memorial commemorating 19th-century politician Robert Waithman, will be reconstructed and relocated.

Media Representation
Following the permission granted to the application on April 22, 2021 various online media publication produced articled discussing the controversial demolition proposal, both news and professional architecture and construction resources such as The Times, Apollo Magazine, Architects’ Journal, Press Gazette and Planning Resource. SAVE Britain's Heritage created a petition on Change.org aimed at Robert Jenrick (Secretary of state for housing, communities and local government) to prevent the demolition of the site.

Historical Significance
Historical societies such as Historic England, the government’s heritage advisers, SAVE Britain’s Heritage, the Twentieth Century Society and the Victorian Society largely oppose City of London Council’s plans for demolition.

SAVE Britain’s Heritage strongly objects the mass demolition of the buildings on Fleet st. The organisation states that the street’s architecture has remained unchanged since the World War II and has been recorded on photographs and film as an iconic city panorama. Moreover, the site is located on a major connection route between the City of London and the City of Westminster, as well as occupies two Conservation Areas, that of Fleet Street and Whitefriars.

The Director of SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Henrietta Billings, said:

“Conservation areas like this one are designed to recognise and protect the special character, flair and heritage of our important streets and places. Fleet Street is famous for its rich newspaper history, as well as its largely well-preserved streets and alleyways and medieval street pattern. Large scale demolition-creep of this kind is crass and short-sighted in any location - let alone in a so-called conservation area. The whole approach needs a re-think.”

The organisation insists on a public enquiry and has additionally set up a petition on Change to force reconsideration of the planning permission.

Recorded Views of St. Paul’s Disrupted
Due to the visibility of the St. Paul’s Cathedral, the massively recorded view of Fleet st. which connects the City of London to the Western part of the capital is also considered as a historically significant piece of culture by the preservation specialists.

Carbon Footprint of the Planned Demolition
The Salisbury Square redevelopment scheme’s developer and planning authority the City of London stated that the project will help ‘achieve net zero across the Square Mile by 2040’. But an embodied carbon analysis carried out as part of AJ’s RetroFirst campaign by Philip Oldfield, indicated that the demolition will result in an upfront carbon footprint which is 19,180 more tonnes of CO2e or 42 per cent higher than a that of a strategy based on reusing the existing buildings. The demolition and rebuild option equated to 64,744 tonnes of CO2e, whereas the retrofitting was equal to 45,564 tonnes of CO2e.

The project has acted as a cause for political debate within the House of Lords discussions on planning permissions granted to large-scale demolition projects without the ‘retrofitting’ option being considered beforehand.

The Director of SAVE Britain’s Heritage, Henrietta Billings, expressed her opinion on the matter:"‘In the run-up to Cop 26 and ministerial pledges on net zero targets, it seems extraordinarily short-sighted for the City of London and the Ministry of Justice to promote the bulldozing of reusable and historic building stock in the heart of one of London's most famous and cherished streets.’"

Dissolution of the Remaining Medieval Urban Fabric
The part of the capital around Fleet st. site has managed to retain a medieval street pattern including Hanging Sword Alley which bisects the site.