MEGA-EMBASSY PLANS HAVE PROVED IMPERVIOUS
There’s no debate that China needs a bigger diplomatic base. In addition to its main premises in Portland Place in the West End, the embassy has sections spread across half a dozen other locations in London. Consolidating these (which should be a condition of any approval) would make China’s activities easier to monitor.
Meanwhile, Britain’s own embassy in Beijing is in sore need of renovation, a project that Chinese authorities have held up pending signoff on their London plans.
I sympathise with nearby residents who view the site as unsuitable and blanch at the thought of living in the shadow of a one-party surveillance state. It’s unfortunate that Royal Mint Court, centred on a 19th-century Georgian mansion and including the ruins of a 14th-century Cistercian abbey, was sold to China.
The sale took place in 2018, under the Conservative government of Boris Johnson, at the tail end of the “golden era” of UK-China relations. It was a different world, when Beijing had yet to crush Hong Kong’s freedoms or extend support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Opponents made a compelling case that the plan would lead to traffic paralysis and the site lacked the space to accommodate protests (Hong Kong exiles turned out in force to drive home the point). In the end, these local concerns didn’t count for much. The mega-embassy has proved impervious to everything thrown at it. The force majeure of national priorities meant this was always the likely destination.
The saga isn’t quite over. The Royal Mint Court Residents Association has sought two opinions from planning lawyer Charles Banner and is preparing to lodge a judicial review. Members, whose homes now stand on land owned by China, are now raising money to fund the action.
At a minimum, that’s likely to prolong the process by a few months – further irritating China, which has already railed at the UK government’s delay in delivering. Few who remember the Chinese embassy’s initial, unanimously rejected attempt to win local approval will lose sleep over that.
Whether the prospect of a legal challenge reflects the beauty of a democratic system with checks and balances or the decadence and sclerosis of a faded former imperial power is likely to depend on whether you sit in Beijing or Westminster. Or Tower Hamlets.
