Pages about "the ugliest building in London"
Latest News - 9th April 2010
As minuted at the Colliers Wood Residents' Association Meeting of 2nd March 2010, The council is finally taking enforcement action against Golfrate under Section 215 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990: “Power to require proper maintenance of land” - more than a year after Cllr Nick Draper asked it to do so.
The council is requiring the following action:
- mend the cladding to stop further crumbling and falling of masonry (which looks like a major job)
- remove the green netting after these repair works
- clean or repaint the building
- clear out all the junk and rubbish from the car park
- clear all weeds on the site and around the building
- make the fencing around the property totally secure
- take down the unauthorised banner
- 22/02: letter was sent to Golfrate requesting above works
- 8/03: deadline for Golfrate to respond - not met
- 12/03: Legal Services authorised to serve a Section 215 Notice after determining that all statutory requirements have been met
- 17/03: Legal Services served a Section 330 Notice - “Power to require information as to interests in land” - on the registered proprietor, Sutherland House (registered in the Isle of Man; acquired the property in June 2008)
- 09/04: Legal Services served the Section 215 Notice
- 09/04 + 56 days: Golfrate faces prosecution if it has not complied with the Notice or appealed to a magistrates' court in the mean time
Tower Quotes
- “Even more spectacularly large is the Colliers Wood Tower, which really should be put out of its misery. Looming over the centre of Colliers Wood like a huge black monolith, it is stunningly ugly” - tubewalker.com
- “It looks like it survived a nuclear holocaust” - BBC article
- “hideous beast” - urban75.org
- “It really is disgraceful that such a landmark building which can be seen from miles around should have become a symbol of urban squalor and decay” - Keith Spears of the CWRA
- “Why on earth would I want to move just down the road to end up in the shadow of that thing?” - thecabbiescapital.co.uk
- “If aliens ever land in South London the Tower’s the spot they’ll make contact” - Sally Nettleton, Comedienne
- “He [the camera-shy Asif Aziz] can sit on the property for a very long time. The more he sits on it, the more desperate people become” - Siobhan McDonagh, MP for Mitcham and Morden
- “We would never allow a company to mothball a building as this would be tantamount to exempting them from responsibility for their property” - Sarah Tanburn of Merton Council, April 2009, six months after the building became empty. It is still mothballed.
- “The Tower occupies the majority of the island site ... The site currently comprises a 17 storey tower, 5 storey car park and a small surface car parking area. The concrete-frame tower was constructed in the 1960s” - brochure written by its owners (PDF)