Abuse Of Authority By The City Of London’s Chief Planning Officer Over 65 Gresham Street: The Poodles Bark Back

On 19/2/24 we exposed how the City of London’s Chief Planning Officer, Gwyn Richards, determined an application for the redevelopment of 81 Newgate Street himself instead of referring it to the Planning Committee. On 8/3/24 we reported how he failed to explain his authority to do so when Alder Sue Pearson questioned him at a meeting of that committee.

We reported on 22/3/24 how Richards again exceeded his authority, this time by determining an application for the redevelopment of 65 Gresham Street himself instead of referring it to the Planning Committee. Pearson again questioned him at a meeting of that committee (sitting as an application sub-committee) on 9/4/24, as we report below.

At 2:02:50 of this recording of the meeting, she asked:

“The blog site Reclaim EC1 has described how the Chief Planning Officer approved an application for the redevelopment of 65 Gresham Street by himself under delegated authority, although that authority does not cover:

– a scheme that fails to accord with planning policy, like this scheme by admission of the applicant’s own agent; or 

– a scheme that is “of broad interest”, like this scheme which was of such broad interest that the City Corporation issued a press release announcing its approval.

Can the Chief Planning Officer please explain why he determined this application himself instead of bringing it to this committee?

And it is not an answer for the Chief Planning Officer to say that he consulted the Chair and Deputy Chair about this scheme and they agreed that he could determine it by himself under delegation. There is nothing in the corporate documentation on delegations that permits planning applications to be determined under delegation because the Chair and Deputy Chair think that it should be.”

Before Richards answered, his boss Bob Roberts, the Interim Executive Director Environment, attempted a defensive strike. Roberts knows nothing about the built environment, and is entirely unqualified for the position he holds. His background is in political spin, which is a rightly despised occupation. One of the most disastrous PR stunts in political history occurred on his watch as spin doctor to former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband: the unveiling of the infamous Edstone. When Roberts’ career in national politics ended with Miliband’s downfall, he found a new role in the micro politics of the City of London council as its Communications Director.

In that role, Roberts faked a relaxed, likeable manner that quickly slipped into verbal aggression against journalists, residents and even elected members. On his watch, the City council’s image became so tarnished that at the councillor elections in 2022, a couple of members who held senior positions in the business City did not stand for re-election because they were concerned about damage being done to their professional reputations from being associated with the council.

So it came as no surprise that Roberts resorted to verbal aggression when Pearson asked the Chief Planning Officer a question he couldn’t properly answer. This was what Roberts said (at 2:03:56):

“I’ll leave the Chief Planning Officer to answer in detail, but if this blog is being mentioned, I don’t think it should go without passing that there was a large amount of abuse and personal insult in the piece being referenced. That is not the way we should do things in the City, and I wanted to take this opportunity to condemn that personal abuse and I’m sure the whole sub-committee would join me in condemning any personal attacks be they against an officer or a member.”

Roberts didn’t specify the “abuse and personal insult” he ranted about, but the context suggests he was referring to our description of Richards as a “poodle” of the City council’s leaders. A dictionary definition of a “poodle” in the political sense (the sense in which it frequently appears in Hansard) is one who “obediently or passively follows the lead of others”. That is precisely what Richards does, as documented in our previous posts, so this description of him is appropriate.

Roberts’ claim that “abuse and personal insult” is “not the way we should do things in the City” is also hypocritical.  Some women councillors, in particular, have been the object of abuse in the form of lies and baseless smears by senior members, mostly masons, but Roberts did not feel moved to “condemn” any of that.

An appropriate description of Roberts himself is a poodle with pretensions to being a rottweiller.

Alastair Moss, former Chair of the Planning Committee and current Chair of the Corporate Services Committee, then intervened on a bogus “point of order” to say (at 2:04:24) that:

“The information contained in that website is abusive towards officers as well, and as Chairman of Corporate Services, I think that it is perfectly within the remit of any officer not to engage in any discussion regarding that website, but obviously it’s within the remit of the Chief Planning Officer to respond as he wishes or not.”

Moss’ comment unconsciously reflects how deeply the culture of the City council has been corrupted by masonry  and how even members – like Moss – who are not masons behave as if they were, because that is the way things are done in this masonically-led council. In masonry, the master of a lodge – however deserving of criticism he may be for his performance of the role – is not to be criticised. Indeed, every mason is presumed to be a good man, even if – like several senior members of the City council – the facts indicate otherwise. So in this council, criticism of anyone who holds a senior position, whether as a member or an officer, is taboo. That is of course fundamentally undemocratic, and is one of the many problems with the existence of this council.

Moss is also in no position to speak about being abusive. On 22/5/21 we exposed his irritable and aggressive behaviour, particularly towards a woman member, when he was Chair of the Planning Committee . Listen also to his petulance towards the same woman member at 2:00:00 in the meeting which is the subject of this post.

Richards finally spoke (at 2:04:47). Although he had been given the opportunity by Moss not to speak at all, he must have realised how bad that would look to everyone except the poodles (in the dictionary sense mentioned above) forming a majority of the Planning Committee. So instead he read a carefully crafted statement which was designed to sound to an inattentive listener as if it disposed of all the points in Pearson’s question, but which crumbles under even slight scrutiny.

Regarding the point that he did not have authority to determine this application because the scheme failed to accord with planning policy, he said:

“You mentioned a third party [the applicant’s own agent, who admitted that the scheme did not accord with planning policy]. I cannot comment on any suggestions from third parties, but the delegated officer report on the planning application is readily available on the planning portal. It’s a 25 page very comprehensive report, and it does not identify policy non-compliance issues with the scheme. Therefore it is a policy compliant scheme in line with the … first criteria of the scheme of delegation.”

Actually, he could have commented on the third party’s admission that the scheme did not accord with planning policy by saying simply whether that admission was correct or not. But that would mean his either making the same admission himself or telling an outright lie that the scheme did accord with planning policy. Instead, he fudged his response by referring to his report, in which he said that he did not “identify policy non-compliance issues with the scheme”. That is not quite the same as saying that the scheme did not accord with all planning policies. It could just mean that he didn’t think that instances of non-compliance were “issues”, taking everything into account. But while the Planning Committee can take that view, he can’t: according to the council’s Scheme of Delegations, applications which do not accord with planning policy fall outside the scope of delegated authority – full stop. His conclusion that “therefore it is a policy compliant scheme” is invalid, as it is a consequence of this carefully flawed reasoning.

The policies with which the scheme failed to comply are clearly described in this letter of objection, written by a planning professional acting for the owner of a neighbouring building.







Incidentally, Richards’ report on this application has the same tone of gushing enthusiasm as all his reports for office developments, so it’s no surprise that he didn’t find any “issues” with it. Here’s just one example. In assessing the heritage harm caused by this scheme to the Grade II listed West Wing of the Guildhall, he wrote:

“The plant enclosure and uppermost story of the proposal would be visible to varying degrees from within Guildhall Yard, with it featuring most prominently in views from the easternmost section of the Yard. In views of the Guildhall from here it would form a highly prominent new feature above the existing West Wing … It would take the form of a high-quality neo-Gothic episode with a highly elaborate and dynamic roofline that would  introduce drama and interest to the views. It would introduce another layer of modern development in views of the Guildhall, of complementary rather than conflicting style.”

This is the kind of nonsense that Richards writes whenever a proposed development would trash the City’s heritage. In the case of a proposed office tower that would overshadow Bevis Marks Synagogue, which would certainly not be “of complementary rather than conflicting style”, he rejoiced in its “impact” being “one of the qualities of the juxtaposition” (scroll down link).

We predict that when a developer friend of the council’s leaders one day wants to build a tower that overshadows St Paul’s Cathedral, the protection of which is supposed to be a red line in City planning policy, those leaders will support it: they are, after all, willing to let its Jewish equivalent be overshadowed; they’ve let the setting of their own Guildhall be compromised; they scorn the harm done to the lives of their own residents in all the City’s estates (Barbican, Golden Lane here, here and here and Middlesex Street); and maybe they will reason that it is no longer appropriate to protect St Paul’s as a relic of the past in their vision of a modern dynamic City (although in reality that City will increasingly become a desert of empty office buildings as dwindling demand for space is absorbed by a few new massive towers in the “eastern cluster”). They can of course call on their poodle Richards to gush forth with his prose about how the development degrading St Paul’s was a high-quality neo-Baroque “episode” that would create drama, interest, juxtaposition – whatever words serve the purpose of saying “yes” to the developer, which is what his master Hayward has openly said he wants.

Reverting to Pearson’s question, and regarding the point that Richards did not have authority to determine the application for 65 Gresham Street because the scheme was “of broad interest”, he said:

“Clearly the definition of “broad interest” is more of a matter of judgment, which we exercise. In this particular application, the scheme was a light touch retrofitting of an existing eleven storey building, and adding three stories. As schemes go, this is pretty typical of the genre of applications which make up most of the City schemes. There were no wider interests, there were no breaches in things like St Paul’s height or protected vistas and so on. So … I will take full ownership of that decision. This was done within the scheme of delegation, and at no point did I ask for authorisation from either the Chairman or the Deputy Chairman.”

Saying that “broad interest” is “more of a matter of judgment” is like saying that roofs get wet when it rains is “more of a matter of judgment” than fact. Some things are so obvious that they transcend the realm of judgment to fact. This scheme being “of broad interest” is one of them. It is a large building in the heart of the City that is about to become larger. It has, as Richards discloses in his report, a “highly prominent” effect on the setting of the Grade II listed Guildhall West Wing. That last fact is itself sufficient to make the scheme “of broad interest”, as heritage is a matter of interest to nearly everyone outside the executive suites of the council’s leaders and the senior officers who respond every time the leaders shout “fetch!”

The scheme is not “light touch” in any sense except one understood by Richards. He lists things which he thinks that the scheme does not offend to distract attention from those which it does – a standard bureaucratic ploy. He emphasises that he did not “ask for authorisation from either the Chairman or the Deputy Chairman”, but those words don’t preclude his consulting them, which formed part of his attempted justification for determining the application for 81 Newgate Street himself.

Finally, Richards said:

“In terms of the press release on the planning permission, and the suggestion that this is evidence of broader interest, it’s worth considering that this scheme was worth highlighting within the context of the emerging “retrofit first” local plan policy, the utilisation of the carbon options advice note in the application process and really to send an external message that, despite contrary viewpoints, the City is proud of its retrofitting schemes in the pipeline which often do not receive the media coverage they deserve. That was the rationale for that communications piece, not as evidence of broader interest. Again, I would reiterate on your final point: I take full ownership of the decision to deal with the scheme under delegated authority.”

Actually, the council’s press release is evidence of this scheme being “of broad interest”, although the points we have mentioned above are so strong that no further evidence is needed. Every week the council deals with hundreds of matters in all its departments, but very few of them become the subject of a press release. Richards’ desperate attempt to spin the “communications piece” as not supporting the notion that this scheme is “of broad interest” is self-defeating: all the things he mentions underline that it is.

As for his taking “full ownership of the decision to deal with the scheme under delegated authority”, he doth protest too much. The nature of his relationship with his political masters is determined by his actions, which are always calculated to please them and their developer friends, not the fact that he says “woof” when told that he’s a poodle.

Graham Packham, the Deputy Chair of Planning who was chairing this meeting in the absence of the Chair, made the point that most planning decisions were taken under delegated authority, which was a point not worth making, because no-one disputed that obvious and necessary fact. His words appeared to be an attempt to cover up the fact that this application, which clearly failed to accord with planning policy and was obviously “of broad interest”, should not have been among those determined under delegated authority.

Packham’s tone was surly and border line aggressive – listen at 2:08:06 – but that’s nothing new. Listen to his response to another woman member on another subject earlier at 2:00:00.

Our previous post on 65 Gresham Street and this one do indeed concern “abuse”: the abuse of authority by Richards pleasing his political masters.     

It’s a measure of how supine the majority of members of the Planning Committee are that none of them expressed concern about how Richards’ decision on this application would have a significant impact on their own Guildhall, as admitted by Richards in his report. The explanation for this silence again lies in the council’s masonic culture, and the consequent atmosphere of fear among members: anyone who seriously criticises the leaders and their lackeys becomes the subject of some very nasty abuse.

In Sue Pearson’s case, that abuse first took the form six years ago of:

– a referral for prosecution which was entirely groundless, and which eventually ended with an embarrassed email from the City Police Commissioner declining to investigate and an apology from the Town Clerk; and

– a bogus complaint to the mason-led Standards Committee, which ended with no sanction and the eventual abolition of that committee.

But Pearson is exceptional in having the courage to stand up for what is right. Most other members don’t.

That became evident when the London Wall West application was approved by the Planning Applications Sub-Committee on 17/4/24. We’ll report on that scandal in the near future. We predict the same will happen when the second application for 31 Bury Street (overshadowing the Synagogue) is considered at a future date.

It’s time that City residents, the few City workers who take an interest in what the council does and anyone concerned with the preservation of City heritage take action to get rid of this council regime that does so much harm. One opportunity will be the councillor elections due to be held in March 2025. Those councillors in residential wards who collaborate with the leaders need to be opposed by candidates who represent their fellow residents’ interests instead of their own. The problem remains that most wards are dominated by generally disengaged business voters, often in tiny numbers. But even there, challenges to incumbents by enlightened business voters (who do exist) will be encouraged. One day, this shadow will fall.