Challenging our disposable attitude to buildings

SAVE's biggest case in years helped change policy and practice on reusing buildings

This influential campaign – SAVE’s biggest for years – brought together heritage and climate change for the first time as the joint focus of a major UK planning inquiry. It shook up the property industry’s disposable attitude to buildings, caught the public’s imagination and made national headlines. We took on the case in 2021 precisely because it offered a chance to demonstrate the wastefulness of knocking down and replacing perfectly good buildings – and how this urgently needs to change in the face of climate crisis.

The case involved plans to demolish an elegant but unlisted Inter-war department store opposite Selfridge’s on Oxford Street – the “nation’s high street” – right beside a conservation area. M&S’s own figures showed that erecting a 10-storey building – however “green” – would release 40,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere immediately (the “embodied carbon” emissions from making all that new concrete, steel and glass). We argued that the three existing buildings could be brought up to modern requirements at a fraction of the carbon cost – and without doing permanent damage to this distinctive part of London’s West End.

What SAVE did:

• Wrote to Westminster council to object to M&S’s plans.
• Publicised the issue in the media.
• Commissioned expert analysis of the CO2 implications, which has enhanced industry understanding of this emerging science.
• Rallied architectural and environmental experts to back our request to government for an inquiry.
• This was granted and in autumn 2022 we fought – and won – a historic two-week public inquiry, the first ever to have heritage and carbon at its heart.

We were overwhelmed by support from the public. Hundreds helped smash our £20,000 crowdfunder which enabled us to be represented by barrister Matthew Fraser and three expert witnesses: carbon specialists Simon Sturgis and Dr Julie Godefroy, plus planning and heritage professional Alec Forshaw.

As the SAVE team prepared for the inquiry we were encouraged by many supporters and experts submitting evidence backing our case – including Kristin Scott Thomas and Griff Rhys Jones, London Eye architect Julia Barfield and engineer Dr Alice Moncaster, who advises the UK Parliament on sustainable development.

We won! But M&S later challenged Michael Gove’s decision in the High Court and the case was sent back to the new Secretary of State for redetermination in 2024.

SAVE then:

• Coordinated a joint open letter to Angela Rayner signed by 25 leading figures, from Bill Bryson, George Clarke and Kevin McCloud to Stirling Prize-winning architect Annalie Riches and Oriel Prizeman, professor of sustainable building conservation at the Welsh School of Architecture. The letter made headlines in the Times. 
• Submitted further detailed evidence as requested by the Secretary of State.
• Held a design competition with The Architects’ Journal to explore alternative ideas for the M&S Oxford Street site, demonstrating demolition need not be inevitable. This culminated in a live Bake Off-style charrette where the teams worked up their ideas in front of judges and journalists.

Disappointingly in December 2024 the Secretary of State granted M&S permission for its demolition plans – despite branding them harmful in her decision letter and calling the scheme a “missed opportunity to retain, reuse and adapt”.

The ball is now in M&S’s court.

What next?

This high-profile case helped shift the dial on the way industry thinks about retrofit.

It also shone a light on the gaping holes in planning legislation. The detail of policy has not caught up with the UK’s legally binding net-zero carbon commitments, nor does it reflect widespread public and industry opinion.

Many developers are trying to do the right thing and progressive planning authorities are adopting “retrofit-first” policies, but they all say government action is needed to create a level playing field. SAVE is appealing for policy reform, a move that was reported by national and construction press.