Liverpool Street Station Campaign logo
Time to pause – and question Network Rail’s plans.
The Liverpool Street Station Campaign (LISSCA), headed by Griff Rhys Jones, has carefully considered the latest plans for Liverpool Street Station. We oppose these plans as they stand.
Griff Rhys Jones, President of LISSCA and the Victorian Society, said:
“The Victorian Society and other expert bodies have looked in detail at the new proposal for Liverpool Street Station, and cannot accept that this is the best way forward. Other London stations like King’s Cross and St Pancras have adapted to the twenty-first century. They revealed their original Railway Age splendour. It seems perverse that the proposals at Liverpool Street should still go in the opposite direction. Over two thousand people objected to the previous scheme. This new scheme does not answer their justified concern. It is surely time for Network Rail to stop looking at this handsome station as a development site and to recognise it as the important and historic artefact that it is; one that works and can continue to work. Network Rail has a duty for improvements to be less intrusive, and to serve the passenger, not profit. Above all, they should not be seeking huge additions and causing damage to listed buildings as a means to achieve new services.”
What Network Rail and ACME are proposing
Network Rail has unveiled proposals for a new 97m office block that would require the demolition and replacement of the existing station concourse, and with it a large portion of the listed station building. The new block would accommodate 90,000sq m of office space, while 14,539sq m of retail space would be delivered elsewhere in the station. Upgrades to the station would primarily involve the installation of lifts, escalators and a concourse of increased capacity.
One need look no further than London’s award-winning Kings Cross, Waterloo, and St Pancras Stations to see how accessibility has been significantly improved and passenger flow enhanced, without a detrimental impact on the historic character of the station. Even in stations where a sizeable commercial development has been justified to fund the improvements, as at London Paddington (with the Cube) and London Bridge Station (with the Shard), crucially the new enabling office developments have been adjacent to the main station, and not impinged on the concourse or platform areas. Why should Liverpool Street Station be any different?
How much?
Network Rail has so far refused to release any costings for this project, nor has it yet provided a heritage statement or heritage impact assessment, and other crucial information that will be necessary to really scrutinise the scheme. Given that the whole scheme is predicated on the purported need to fund station upgrades on-site, releasing costings is surely necessary both as a matter of transparency, and to assess the acceptability of what is proposed.
Sweeping extent of demolition
The extent of demolition of the 20th century work would be dramatic, with the almost total loss of the impressive existing concourse. As was highlighted in the recently revised listing for the station, much of the 1980s/90s redevelopment of Liverpool Street Station was carried out with great care and sympathy with the 19th century station. It has a value of its own, as well as a relationship with the station and the neighbouring Grade II*-listed hotel that renders it highly significant.
Hulking office block
The sheer scale of the hulking great over-station development is not acceptable. Indeed, we would question the principle of any over-station development. There are issues, too, with daylight. The current naturally light-filled concourse with a transparent glass roof will be hemmed in under the base of the tall tower proposed with a new solid roof. This will be an oppressive space, dominated by 19 huge columns required to support the 21-storey tower. This will be more like Cannon Street Station than the bright space the visualisations depict.
Massive harm
The combination of the extent of demolition of the listed station building and the overwhelming imposition of a looming office block overshadowing the station would have a profound and harmful impact on the station, its relationship with (and the setting of) the hotel, the valuable 20th century work, and the Bishopsgate Conservation Area. Cumulatively the harm to the historic environment would be substantial.
Dangerous precedent
How can it be that the substantial demolition of a listed building and the construction of a tall tower in a conservation area, through and around listed buildings (amounting in effect to 21 storeys in height), is the ‘only’ way to deliver necessary operational upgrades for one of the busiest train stations in the country? Why can’t Network Rail redevelop other places it owns to pay for the accessibility improvements at Liverpool Street? Network Rail is paying for new lifts at suburban stations like Hither Green in London, and elsewhere; why can’t it pay for necessary accessibility upgrades at a major terminus? Hither Green station to get new lifts to replace steep wheelchair ramp | News Shopper. Publicly funded gate line improvements are being currently delivered entirely independent of the proposed scheme. Gate line improvements are therefore not a benefit of the scheme. It is unclear why Liverpool Street Station would not be eligible for significant funding from the Department for Transport and Network Rail Access for All programme from which tens of millions of pounds has not been used up. If Network Rail and the Department for Transport are unwilling to fund essential accessibility improvements at what is now the UK’s busiest train station, with 94.5m “entries and exits” made by passengers at the station, where does that leave any other station?
Impact on St Paul’s Cathedral
The development would interact with protected views in which St Paul’s Cathedral plays a key role. A full suite of documents submitted as part of the planning application will shed further light on this impact.
What’s the rush?
Why is this scheme being rushed through consultation? The architects and design team were only recently appointed. Given the controversial nature of the original proposals, the huge public interest, that a publicly funded body are involved, why are Network Rail pushing so hard to deliver this to the City of London planners in such short time?
The Victorian Society is chairing the reformed Liverpool Street Station Campaign (LISSCA), which stopped the station’s total demolition in the 1970s. The Committee comprises SAVE Britain’s Heritage, The Twentieth Century Society, Historic Buildings & Places, The Council for British Archaeology, the Georgian Group, the Spitalfields Trust, Civic Voice, London Historians, the Betjeman Society, London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, the Victorian Society, and original campaigners from the 1970s who prevented all the station buildings being demolished.
Network Rail and ACME’s PDF of information from the consultation can be viewed here.
Visualisation of the view towards the Andaz London Liverpool Street (formerly the Great Eastern Hotel) on Bishopsgate from Network Rail’s November 2024 consultation (c) ACME
