Outline Permission
Mr. Cotton's group submitted the barest outline of what they intended to do with the Monico site !astonishingly enough, only the vaguest indication pf intentions is necessary), and was granted out- Inc planning permission by the Council on March 5, 1957. That permission was granted on certain 'onditions; the building would have to conform 0 the Council's requirements in such matters as al'-parking facilities. daylighting and the like, ncluding the all-important plot-ratio. (This is the .trio between the area of the site and the amount nd type of floor-space permitted in a building !I-coed on if.) The Council also asked that the trchitects for the site should keep in close touch .vith them.
The other site to attract the property dealers Vas the L-shaped block surrounding Scott's Restaurant. Here, however, the Council was un- Vining to grant permission for development, and at the beginning of October, 1958. there was an appeal by H. Samuel Ltd., on behalf of T. P. Bennett and Son, against the Council's failure to live permission. At the public inquiry before Vhich this appeal was heard (it was disallowed) a !lumber of things happened. Mr. Scarman, for the 1-(C, said that serious consequences would result if the appeals were allowed. The future redevelop- ment of Piccadilly Circus was at stake. It would mean that a decision governing the shape and character of the Circus would have been given 'efore a comprehensive redevelopment plan had been settled. And Mr. L. W. Lane, the LCC's Senior Planning Officer, said 'The Circus is one (4. the most important centres of London. It is visited by more people and a greater variety of [ Deople than any other. It is not only a centre for i)tertainment but is a traditional centre of tlational rejoicing and celebration.' •
But something else happened at the public
inquiry in October, 1958. Models and photo- graphs were produced by the LCC representa- tives, showing two alternative (but largely similar) schemes for the comprehensive develop- ment of almost the whole Circus (see below). From a study of these, it is immediately apparent that a most exciting and imaginative plan had been prepared, at least comparable to the great Barbican scheme. Although there was some com- promise in the plan, particularly at the Piccadilly and Regent Street end of the Circus area, a strik- ing attempt had been made to take pedestrians off the ground entirely, and transfer them to walkways traversing and circling at any rate three sides of a central piazza (in which Eros stands untouched). Most of the surrounding buildings are on 'stilts'; the walkways are at a level of eighteen feet, where also many of the shops, etc.. are to be found. Coventry Street is spanned by a huge 'bridge,' a building beneath which the traffic flows. Most of the London Pavi- lion site is 'thrown into' the roadway, but extend- ing back from it there is a handsome, rectangular glass-fronted block, and a similar block stands on the Monica sire. (As a matter of interest, the Monico block in the LCC's comprehensive scheme is only 130 feet high, and the advertisements are confined to the 'pedestrian' level.) This scheme was solemnly put forward at a public inquiry (into a question of planning permis- sion for a totally different site) nineteen months after outline planning permission had been granted to Mr. Cotton to develop the Monico site, and therefore after nineteen months of that close touch that Mr. Cotton's architects had been instructed to keep, and doubtless had kept, with the Council.
A few days after the end of the public inquiry, the comprehensive plan was submitted to the Town Planning Committee of the London County Council for the first time. It had to be; having already been seen by public and press at the inquiry. Some members of the Council may well have been disturbed by the fact that they had not seen this plan before; the Town Planning Committee had, after all, approved (in the rubber-stamp fashion which is all that the enormous quantity of business with which they are expected to deal in an absurdly short space of time allows them) outline permission for the Monico site in March, 1957, and might well have had something to say about that permission if they had had any inkling that such a scheme was in the air. (This, it seems, is just one more piece of evidence of the extent to which County Hall has become a kind of Reichstag; Sir Isaac Hay- ward—who recently declared his intention of retiring but has since successfully 'done an Adenauer' and is now apparently going to stay in office—has to give his approval to any
decisions he does not actually take himself, but for any rank-and-file member of the overwhelm- ing Labour majority to try and examine in any detail a decision in which millions of pounds of London's money and millions of London lives are intimately concerned, is not only made practically impossible, but regarded as not far short of treason.)
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