The controversial plans to rebuild much of Liverpool Street station depend on one crucial argument – that they are the only way to significantly improve the experience of using the terminus. In order to reduce crowding on escalators and at ticket barriers, says the consortium that wants to develop it, its cathedral-scaled concourse has to be demolished and replaced with a two-level arrangement, to pay for which a 16-storey office block will have to be perched over the station and the neighbouring Great Eastern hotel (now called the Andaz), both of which are listed buildings.
In which case, you would think that the developers would shout their evidence from the rooftops. Instead, some underwhelming data trickles out in the 467 documents that accompany their planning application, which have recently become public. They show that some but not all of the station’s bottlenecks would be alleviated, and don’t conclusively prove that the same ends could be achieved by less drastic means. The developers also say that their improvements would cost the improbably vast sum of £450m, but refuse to show the workings behind the figure on the basis of “commercial confidentiality”.
This reticence is consistent with a tendency towards obfuscation that has accompanied the proposals ever since they were first unveiled. Given the scale and impact of this orgy of construction and disruption, the burden of proof is surely on them to demonstrate its necessity, which they still haven’t done.
Battle for Hastings
It has long been a cruel and wasteful absurdity that local authorities have to pay high rents to private landlords to house the homeless in sub-standard accommodation. Had they not been obliged to sell off much of their own properties under right to buy, or been allowed to replace them with new homes, they would be better placed to house people, and would receive rather than pay out income in the process. This situation is now driving authorities such as Hastings borough council in East Sussex towards bankruptcy. It now has to spend nearly a third of its budget on emergency housing, which costs it more than seven times as much as it did in 2019, and many other councils face similar challenges. Short-term and expensive fixes will be required. In the longer term, there’s a response both to this and other aspects of the housing crisis that confront the government, but which it has been ideologically and perhaps organisationally unable to pursue. Build more public housing, it has to be said over and over. Build more public housing.
Words can’t hurt
To PalFest, the Palestinian festival of literature, which included moving poems about the region’s histories of displacement, vivid messages from people experiencing the conflict in Gaza, readings by the actor Julie Christie, and a few too many men reflecting for too long on the current situation. What it did not include was support for terrorism, nor was there any sense of danger to audience or speakers. Yet, it took place at short notice in a crowded hall belonging to the National Education Union (NEU), after the Royal Geographic Society (RGS) – where it had been booked months in advance – decided on the basis of “security advice” to cancel. The organisers of the festival say 60 other venues were approached, but all declined.
The RGS said that it had nothing against the event’s content and was only concerned about safety. But if the NEU could host it without trouble, why was it impossible for the others? Even if no censorship was intended, this over-abundance of caution can be almost as stifling of open discussion.
• Rowan Moore is the Observer’s architecture critic
