UBS to learn fate of £340m headquarters
UBS will find out tomorrow whether it has been granted planning permission for its new £340m headquarters, though lobbyists who want the Broadgate site to be granted listed status could get any approval overturned.
The City of London planning committee has already recommended the 700,000 square foot campus for approval, but English Heritage could supersede this with a request to give the Broadgate estate, designed by Peter Foggo in the 1980s, protected listed status.
English Heritage will tell the government within the next month whether the site should be protected, after completing an assessment of the site.
“The City is fully aware of the process that’s going on, and they can make a decision but if we make a recommendation to the Department for Media, Culture and Sport to list the buildings, then they are protected by law,” a spokesperson for English Heritage said yesterday.
The developers, British Land and Blackstone, have already made concessions in an effort to stave off listed status, agreeing in February to preserve 3 Broadgate, a three-storey building used as a marketing suite for the previous Broadgate development.
UBS announced last August that it expected to move into the proposed 13-storey building in 2016. The bank has agreed to pay at least £32m through rent agreements even if the scheme does not get planning permission.
British Land and UBS could not be reached for comment yesterday.
FAST FACTS | BROADGATE
● The Broadgate estate of 16 buildings was designed by Peter Foggo, then of Arup Partners, in the 1980s
● 4 and 6 Broadgate are set to be demolished to make way for the UBS HQ