Time to protect our national green treasures
Parks charity flags importance of protecting UK heritage
Victoria Tower Gardens, the Grade II listed park adjacent to the Palace of Westminster, has been shortlisted as one of the most endangered heritage sites in Europe.
With this nomination to Europe’s Seven Most Endangered [7ME] sites 2025, LPG feels the time is right for its inclusion on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk Register. A previous application from LPG was rejected.
Proposals to build on the park are being pushed through by Angela Rayner’s Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government [MHCLG], with its backers determined to deliver a commitment made eleven-years-ago by Prime Minister David Cameron to build a national Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre.
The development would dominate the whole southern half of this small public park partly situated within the World Heritage Site of the Palace of Westminster. For more than 150 years this quiet oasis in a heavily built-up area has been loved by parliamentarians, residents, and tourists. It is one of several “protected London sightlines”, offering iconic long views between two rows of mature plane trees of the Houses of Parliament and Victoria Tower. It’s where thousands queued to see Queen Elizabeth II lying in state, and was used by Air Ambulances as a landing site to evacuate casualties from terrorist attacks on Westminster Bridge and outside Parliament. But the 1900 Act, originally put in place to safeguard the park as a green space is due to be repealed by the government, to allow construction to go ahead.
London Parks & Gardens [LPG], the Save Victoria Tower Gardens movement and The Thorney Island Society, have fought to protect the park for the last nine years from the scale of the proposed development. The nomination of Victoria Tower Gardens to the Seven Most Endangered Programme 2025 was made by Europa Nostra UK. LPG first raised concerns in a 2019 study. Our recent submission to House of Commons and Lords Select Committees measure the Memorial and Learning Centre encompassing more than 40% of the park’s recreational space.
A London Parks and Gardens spokesperson said:
“Being on the 2025 shortlist of the Seven Most Endangered Programme is indicative of the peril Victoria Tower Gardens faces. Development threatens not only the integrity and heritage of the park, but potentially the future status of the Palace of Westminster as a World Heritage site. This is, always has been, and always will be about the heritage, natural, and social value of the gardens. This is clearly a case of a noble development proposal, sadly in the wrong place as recognised by Europa Nostra, UNESCO, those who love the garden, including us campaigners, and Westminster Council who rejected the planning proposal. We hope Historic England will accept our second request for the park’s inclusion on their Heritage at Risk Register.”
The charity has already successfully challenged the UK Government’s proposals in the British courts. They upheld the 1900 Act of Parliament flagged by LPG forbidding construction in Victoria Tower Gardens. In 2023, UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee voiced serious concerns over the: “significant adverse impact [of the proposal] on the Outstanding Universal Value” to the World Heritage Site of the Palace of Westminster.
The Advisory Panel of the Seven Most Endangered Programme noted:
“The Palace of Westminster is recognised globally as a symbol of a nation’s ‘governance by the people, for the people’. A World Heritage Site, its architecture expresses democratic accountability. Victoria Tower Gardens provides its essential setting, but it’s also a place in its own right not a development site to be filled; it has value. The proposal for a Holocaust Memorial in London is understandable, but the location and scale escalate it from being an object IN a garden to being the object OF the garden, suffocating the space. The inclusion of Victoria Tower Gardens in the Seven Most Endangered Programme 2025 is a call for holistic empathy.”
A House of Lords Select Committee was formed to investigate just the private interests affected by the proposal but was not empowered to dissect the general public policy arguments. It published its report on the 22nd of January 2025. Chair of the Committee Lord Etherton said:
“This report highlights some important concerns which need to be addressed, including the need to keep Victoria Tower Gardens as accessible as possible and communicating any security implications for the project.”
A spokesperson for the Save Victoria Tower Gardens group welcomed the few recommendations made by the Select Committee, but added:
“We are very disappointed the Committee relies on mere assurances from the Promoter, namely the Government, advised by the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation committee. We consider these assurances worthless and unenforceable, from a Promoter which has consistently shown itself to be unreliable.”
