Conserve Connect

Liverpool Street generates enormous public value. 94.5 million passengers. A freehold estate. A national transport node. So who captures the uplift when the air above it becomes a financial instrument? Part III of our investigation puts the numbers on the table: • £197.5m residual value from station retail • £171.75m potential developer profit on the office • A 50 year income strip packaging future station revenue • A delivery structure that determines who keeps the upside This is not just architecture. It is governance. It is distribution. It is value capture in plain sight. And without a published station first minimum baseline, “public benefit” becomes a story told after the deal is structured. Read Part III: conserveconnect.news/who-captures-l… #LiverpoolStreet #CityOfLondon #NetworkRail #LondonPlanning #ValueCapture #PublicBenefit #EIA #Viability #PoliticalEconomy #PublicInfrastructure

Liverpool Street Station “upgrade” is now approved - 19–3. But here’s the trick: public benefit was treated as decisive while the one thing that would make it measurable was treated as if it should not exist. No station-first minimum baseline. No transparent alternatives. Just “viability” - a word that closes debate. The planning case says the scheme is “self-funded”. Fine. But the financials tell a different story: station “improvement works” costed at £419.58m, still modelled as a deficit even after the commercial envelope is counted — and in the applicant’s own present-day outputs, station retail (£197.5m RLV) dwarfs the office contribution (£44.2m RLV). Yet the City signs off an 88,000 sqm over-station office massing - a skyline monument above a national interchange - while the public gets a constrained uplift used to license the deal. This is not design. It’s political economy: how a public asset becomes a development platform, and how “public benefit” becomes a permission slip for value capture. Read Part I: Who Captures Liverpool Street? conserveconnect.news/who-captures-l… #LiverpoolStreet #NetworkRail #ACME #CityofLondon #Planning #Heritage #ValueCapture #Viability #UrbanPolitics #London

Liverpool Street Station redevelopment approved 19–3. But in a 2h22m hearing, objectors spoke for 15 minutes while officers, applicants & supporters occupied the rest. Benefit figures shifted. Late addenda were circulated. Viability was treated as necessity. A decisive vote. A managed process. Full analysis: conserveconnect.news/liverpool-stre… #LiverpoolStreet #Planning #Heritage #PublicAssets

I've #justdonated to The Victorian Society on JustGiving. Donate on @justgiving and support this great cause justgiving.com/campaign/savel…

Network Rail + ACME's plans are on the planning portal @cityoflondon. The way you can help combat this is to object by 9th Feb. OBJECT: Our Guide to writing your objection bit.ly/4jLWsim We need your help to pay legal + experts' fees to fight this bit.ly/4dSfiks

🚂 Network Rail and ACME's latest plans are to be decided next week. 💻 OBJECT: Our easy Guide to writing your own objection is on the link on our bio and below in comments. It takes minutes to do this. ⏳ Thank you. ❤️ PLEASE LIKE & SHARE! Photo: Bishopsgate Institute

@TanyaSzendeffy @RestoreConnect architectsjournal.co.uk/news/kpf-shore…

@ConservConnect @RestoreConnect Did you follow the Shoreditch Works one that just got refused?

Liverpool Street Station is about to be reshaped for decades yet the public is being offered minutes to object. On 10 February 2026, the City of London Corporation’s Planning Applications Sub-Committee considers application 25/00494/FULEIA: a phased redevelopment of Liverpool Street Station and surrounding sites, including partial demolition, major concourse and structural alterations, and an over-station commercial building reaching 97.67m AOD. What matters is not only what is proposed but how the public is permitted to respond. Read the piece here: conserveconnect.news/liverpool-stre… #Planning #Heritage #CityOfLondon #LiverpoolStreet #Urbanism #PublicRealm #Climate #Governance @thevicsoc

The tall tower if built at Liverpool St Station will undermine views of an iconic Wren church in the City, and nearby St Botolph's church. If you want to prevent this object by 9th Feb. Our Guide to writing your own objection bit.ly/4jLWsim Donate bit.ly/4dSfiks

@thevicsoc conserveconnect.news/liverpool-stre…

Our guide to objecting is here: victoriansociety.org.uk/national-news/…

Please email in your objection as the City of London’s server has fallen over so you can’t object online… Email here: PLNComments@cityoflondon.gov.uk OR try online during office hours Mon-Fri. Thanks #SaveLiverpoolStreetStation #London #railways #Bishopsgate #Spitalfields

Liverpool Street is being lined up for partial demolition + a 20 story over-station commercial office build. Object to 25/00494/FULEIA (Liverpool Street Station). Harms: concourse roof replaced; retail galleries in the Victorian train shed; ~20-storey tower dominating the Grade II* Andaz London Liverpool Street. The Victorian Society has a ‘how to object’ guide. ConserveConnect reporting daily. #SaveLiverpoolStreet #SaveLiverpoolStreetStation #LiverpoolStreet #CityOfLondon #Heritage #Conservation #ReuseNotReplace #Planning #LondonArchitecture victoriansociety.org.uk/national-news/… @thevicsoc

Brick Lane isn’t a “site” for sealed, industrial infrastructure, it’s a living cultural street of markets, independent businesses, historic buildings, workshops, venues and communities. A data centre here means blank frontage, servicing traffic, plant noise/heat, and a deeper push toward displacement and cultural erasure. ✍️ Sign the petition calling on Secretary of State Steve Reed to stop the Brick Lane Data Centre: change.org/p/demand-secre… Please sign + share. #SaveBrickLane #BrickLane #Heritage #London #CommunityPower #Planning #TowerHamlets #DataCentre

New on ConserveConnect.com: Buildings Left to Rot - Heritage Protection, Financialisation and the UK’s Crisis of Stewardship. conserveconnect.com/blogs/building… #Heritage #Conservation #BuiltHeritage #Planning #UK #Retrofit Why UK period buildings are increasingly lost through two quieter routes: authorised erosion (strip-out framed as “refurbishment”) and abandonment (neglect until loss seems “inevitable”) and how financialisation, viability-led governance, skills gaps and retrofit pressures intensify the crisis.

On the final afternoon of the Truman Brewery Inquiry, the talk stopped pretending this was only about façades, daylight, and floorplates. The real issue came into view: whose interests the planning system protects—and who gets priced out, erased, or treated as “collateral” in the name of growth. In our latest, we read the closing submissions through the lens of class, capital, and the financialised city—where land becomes an asset, “need” becomes a battleground, and communities are asked to make way for new rent streams. Read the full piece: conserveconnect.news/final-day-bric… #BrickLane #TowerHamlets #LondonPlanning #Housing #Heritage #RightToRemain #SaveBrickLane @TowerHamletsNow @MayorofLondon @SteveReedMP @UKLabour @OurArnoldCircus @SAVEtoReuse @BBCLondonNews

NEW: Day 9 (Afternoon) at the Truman Brewery Inquiry What does “good growth” really mean on Brick Lane? In the final session of Day 9, planners defended a 3MW data centre, SME offices and “substantial” public benefits, while Tower Hamlets and Save Brick Lane pressed the harder questions: - Why is equivocal office “need” outweighing an acute housing crisis? - How did a micro data centre get mega planning weight? - Where is the equality lens for Bangladeshi residents facing rising rents and overcrowding? Our latest report follows the cross-examination of the appellants’ planner and asks: when the Secretary of State does the final balance, who will really count - capital, or the community that made Brick Lane what it is? Read the full piece: conserveconnect.news/day-9-afternoo… #SaveBrickLane #BrickLane #TrumanBrewery #GoodGrowth #PlanningInquiry #HousingCrisis #DataCentres @SteveReedMP @UKLabour @TowerHamletsNow @PlushSe16 @OurArnoldCircus @SAVEtoReuse @PeckhamVision @35percent_EAN

Day 9 at the Truman Brewery Inquiry moves to Tower Hamlets Town Hall — and the city talks back. Michael Ball (Just Space) shows how the scheme will darken social homes and Allen Gardens. Stephen Watts, Suad Chantouki, Cllr Suluk Ahmed, Mikael & Jahed Ahmed, and others speak to language, memory, overcrowding and the right to stay. A data centre + office campus once again takes priority over housing in London’s most overcrowded borough. And a new statement from @SaveBrickLane & @LSEnews alum Gabrielle Kleinberg dissects “corporate-led gentrification” and the data-centre land grab. @SteveReedMP @35percent_EAN @PlushSe16 Read: Day 9 – Light, Language and the Right to Remain conserveconnect.news/day-9-light-la… #SaveBrickLane #TrumanBrewery #RightToRemain #TowerHamlets #EastEnd #DataCentres #HousingCrisis #PlanningInquiry #LondonPlan

What does “maximum reasonable” really mean in Peckham? And for whom? Our new report from the Aylesham Centre Inquiry – Day Four: “Maximum Reasonable: Housing Need, Viability and Who Gets to Stay in Peckham” – follows affordable housing expert George Venning as he takes the Inquiry through the gap between: what Peckham actually needs, and what Berkeley Homes calls viable. Day 4 shows how: - Southwark’s own evidence base accepts oversupplying market homes while still failing to meet affordable need - a scheme that once promised 35% affordable housing and CLT homes has fallen to 12% and no CLT at all - viability rules and “plan-led” language end up deciding who gets to stay, and who is quietly priced out. If “maximum reasonable” is calibrated around developer return, not community survival, what is left of the planning system’s claim to serve the public interest? Read the full article: conserveconnect.news/the-ayelsham-i… @SteveReedMP @lb_southwark @35percent_EAN @PlushSe16 #Peckham #AyleshamCentre #Regeneration #AffordableHousing #Viability #Southwark #RightToStay #ConserveConnect

What does it mean when a community’s future is decided in a spreadsheet? 🧮 Our latest report from the Aylesham Centre Inquiry looks at Day 3, when “viability” took centre stage and Peckham’s future was priced in profit margins, benchmark land values and “maximum reasonable” affordable housing. We trace how: 35% affordable housing became 12% “at this point in the cycle” land value and a 20% developer return were treated as fixed, while community need, CLT housing and local traders became the adjustable variables. Drawing on David Harvey, Brett Christophers, Manuel Aalbers, Doreen Massey and others, we ask a simple question: If viability decides who gets to stay in Peckham, what is left of the planning system’s claim to serve the public? Read the full piece: conserveconnect.news/the-ayelsham-i… #Peckham #AyleshamCentre #PlanningInquiry #AffordableHousing #RightToRemain #Regeneration #LondonHousing #Viability #Financialisation #ConserveConnect @SteveReedMP @MayorofLondon @labour_council @ShapeCoalition1 @SAVEtoReuse @PeckhamVision @PlushSe16

Developers plan to erase East End history for ANOTHER soulless office block — in a city already drowning in empty offices. It’s greed, plain and simple. you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/save… via @38degrees