Angela Rayner steps in over plan to build skyscraper next to Bevis Marks shul

Plans to construct a 43-tower skyscraper on the doorstep of the UK’s oldest synagogue has been put on hold after an intervention from the deputy prime minister.

The City of London planning committee is scheduled to consider developers’ planning application for the tower, located at 31-34 Bury Street in Aldgate, on Friday, December 13. Plans for the proposed tower were submitted in January and follows the rejection of earlier designs by the same developers in 2021.

Secretary of State and Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner MP, has now interceded on the Orthodox synagogue’s behalf by ordering the City of London “not to grant permission for this application without specific authorisation.”

The directive, issued under Article 31 of the Town and Country Planning Order 2015, prevents the City of London’s planning committee from making a final decision and would ensure that the application is referred to her for determination.

The direction does not however prevent the City of London from “considering the application, forming a view as to the merits or, if they are so minded, refusing permission” during the planning committee meeting on the 13th.

Welcoming the intervention, Rabbi Shalom Morris of Bevis Marks Synagogue said the “future of Bevis Marks Synagogue is now very much on the national agenda, as benefits its Grade I listed status and its historic role in British Jewry.”

Over 1,340 objections to the proposed construction of the 43-storey tower have been received by the City of London.

The tower would, its detractors argue, obstruct considerable amounts of natural light from reaching the over 320-year-old synagogue for most hours of the day. The tower would also block the view of the passage of the moon across the night sky, a practice intimately related to the traditions of the Sephardi, Orthodox synagogue and congregation.

Celebrated historian Sir Simon Schama, Professor of History and Art History at Columbia University warned the proposed “looming” tower would “monstrously compromise the experience of worship and even a visit to a place sacred and inspirational to all British Jews, dating as it does from 1701 – the earliest existing architectural example of Jews finding hospitable and safe home in this country.

“To damage the experience Jews have in Bevis Marks is to inflict a wound on the Jewish community of this country at a time when it is already subject to many kinds of insensitive outrages.”

Echoing reference to the shul’s historic significance, Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis said the granting of permission to this proposal would be a “regrettable development with implications for rights of religious practice, precisely in the place where Jews first enjoyed these rights in England following the 17th century resettlement. This would be a tragic irony.”

In January this year, the bar for planning approval in the shul’s immediate area is said to have become more difficult after the shul was included in the newly designated Creechurch Conservation Area, which encompasses both 31 Bury Street and Bevis Marks.

The controversy surrounding a previous proposal from 2021 to construct buildings next to the shul, which reportedly received more than 1,500 letters of objection, was widely picked up in British and international press. The City’s planning committee rejected those plans by 14 votes to 7 amid concerns over lack of light to the shul and the views of nearby Tower of London being impacted.

Writing for the JC in May, Finchley and Golders Green MP Sarah Sackman, who led the legal team that helped save Bevis Marks from the planned development in 2021, said “just three years later, we are going to have to fight again.

“This time, a new, bigger scheme threatens the synagogue. We must mobilise again to fight, to safeguard our heritage for generations to come,” she wrote, adding, “Bevis Marks isn’t just a synagogue, it’s a living monument to the remarkable success story that is Anglo-Jewry... It is the embodiment of a community that arrived as refugees, fleeing persecution and nevertheless established itself in the heart of British life. Its stability is our stability.”

The Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government have been approached for comment.