Lambeth Council has approved the £2bn Vauxhall Square development, which will include a 69-storey, 230.5m residential tower. That makes it the UK's second-tallest residential building after Landmark Pinnacle in Canary Wharf. The wider seven-building plan includes offices, a hotel, student accommodation, and 25% affordable housing, but the vote was close at four in favour and three against. The carbon angle is hard to ignore. Mike Kane, an architect and university lecturer specialising in carbon in construction, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service the scheme was "the worst example of unremitting hostility to the planet" in terms of emissions. He said the site averaged almost double the Greater London Authority's benchmark target in the London Plan, and warned it would be expensive to heat and run over its 60-year lifetime. Historic England, Wandsworth Council, and Westminster Council all opposed the plans. For anyone tracking building emissions or urban decarbonisation, the approval is a case study in how planning decisions handle the gap between policy targets and real project performance. The developer calls it regeneration on an extraordinary scale, but the carbon cost of the tower is set to last for decades.
