Corporation of London offers help to developers planning 150 000 m2 low-level complexes.
The Corporation of London is offering to help developers assemble sites that could hold giant 150 000 m² low-rise office buildings in an attempt to keep major occupiers within the Square Mile.

City planning committee chairman Stuart Fraser, speaking to Building at last week's MIPIM property show in Cannes, said he was talking to US and German banks about these schemes.

Fraser said Blackfriars, Aldgate and the Tower of London area could house the "groundscraper" projects favoured by many large occupiers.

The City is promising to help by allowing occupiers to close streets and plan sites in their "totality", creating Broadgate-style areas.

Fraser said the City, with other major land holdings outside its boundaries to the east, could also provide "science park"-type space in other boroughs. There are already plans for more than 100 000 m² of new space south of London Bridge.

Fraser said: "The major challenge we have is to accommodate the bigger buildings that will be needed in the future, with more consolidation among major tenants. "Discussions we have recently had with major companies reinforce that view. We are talking about more than 1.5 million ft2 [140 000 m2]. We don't really have a problem providing sites for buildings up to 1 million ft2 [90 000 m2].

"It is a question of bringing the sites together. Clearly, conservation areas are out when it comes to this type of thing, but it is not really towers that are the problem.

"Groundscrapers are more 'in'. Occupiers seem to prefer to walk within a complex that feels like a city street, rather than to have to keep going up to the 23rd floor." But in the MIPIM seminar that followed, a panel of senior City figures came under pressure to clarify the corporation's policy on tall buildings, which, the panel said, were encouraged on some sites. It is understood that a planning application is imminent for a new Foster and Partners tower on the Baltic Exchange site where a tower was proposed two years ago.

The original egg-shaped design has been refined, and the scheme could still become the UK's tallest building. It is currently out for consultation.

  • Feelings ran high at MIPIM over proposed planning powers for the new London mayor. The mayor may be given powers to adjudicate on all buildings more than 50 m high – 25% of the City's applications. Corporation policy chair Judith Mayhew said: "We will fight to ensure that we do not go back to the bad old days when planning applications would disappear into County Hall, never to reappear." She called on developers and contractors to oppose the mayor's powers . These are expected to be confirmed imminently.