Dorman Long Tower - Listed Building Status

Happy enough to keep voting them into power. Repeatedly. Oh, that's you isn't it?
 
HiredGun123 said:
Tourists come from all over to visit Stone Henge, it’s a big tourist attraction.

Are you really comparing it to an abandoned industrial eyesore next to South Bank? The place had been abandoned for about 40 odd years. Nobody gave it a second thought until recently.

It’s not comparable
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I'm pretty sure Stonehenge was abandoned for a lot longer than 40 years. It was nothing more than a curio to archaelogists and romantics up until the 1960s. If the area around the DLT is being redeveloped anyway then there's no reason it's surroundings can't be spruced up a bit.

Cultural significance doesn't just come with age or tourist numbers (and having a site that could attract visitors is surely better than just knocking stuff down).

Ex pfc wintergreen said:
it was a landmark
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So you agree that landmarks can be torn down?
Ex pfc wintergreen said:
Fatuous comparison, an ancient monument. Vs a coal bunker.😁
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A defunct seasonal marker vs a defunct coal bunker. What's the difference? Is age the only thing that matters. If the DLT had stood another 50 years would you oppose it's destruction. Another 100? 1000?
Ex pfc wintergreen said:
...spend tens of millions to keep derilict disused buildings of no use.
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Exactly. Tear down Stonehenge and Big Ben as they've both outlived their usefulness. Or are you happy to accept that the original use isn't always the factor determining whether something has value?

And you do realise that buildings end up in a state of disrepair so that it can be used as an excuse to knock them down which is why we need listed status on significant buildings.

MFP said:
What would the arguments be therefore in 20 years when it would have to be torn down? Preserving this tower, at great expense for another two decades, is beneficial how?
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It's already been explained that once the initial repairs had been done the ongoing maintenance costs would have been a lot less than those proferred in the demolition documents.
 
TeaCider said:
It wasn't random though, it was given emergency listed status on the 13th of September, 6 days before its scheduled demolition on the 19th of September, the man in charge of the body planning the demolition protested immediately, providing evidence for why it shouldn't have it, and it was rescinded on the 17th of September.

There was already an established mechanism for applying for listed status to be removed, and it was followed.

I can understand why people are unhappy that it was rescinded, but I'm not really understanding the conspiratorial nature of some of the comments.

Plans were already well under way for it to be demolished, and they stuck to that schedule when the status was removed.
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It on the 10th of September, it was delisted 16th of September by Nadine Dorries less than 4 hours into her new job.
 
Scrote said:
I'm pretty sure Stonehenge was abandoned for a lot longer than 40 years. It was nothing more than a curio to archaelogists and romantics up until the 1960s. If the area around the DLT is being redeveloped anyway then there's no reason it's surroundings can't be spruced up a bit.

Cultural significance doesn't just come with age or tourist numbers (and having a site that could attract visitors is surely better than just knocking stuff down).


So you agree that landmarks can be torn down?

A defunct seasonal marker vs a defunct coal bunker. What's the difference? Is age the only thing that matters. If the DLT had stood another 50 years would you oppose it's destruction. Another 100? 1000?

Exactly. Tear down Stonehenge and Big Ben as they've both outlived their usefulness. Or are you happy to accept that the original use isn't always the factor determining whether something has value?

And you do realise that buildings end up in a state of disrepair so that it can be used as an excuse to knock them down which is why we need listed status on significant buildings.


It's already been explained that once the initial repairs had been done the ongoing maintenance costs would have been a lot less than those proferred in the demolition documents.
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It's gone, furnace next,move on,
 
newyddion said:
It on the 10th of September, it was delisted 16th of September by Nadine Dorries less than 4 hours into her new job.
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The review of the evidence for why it shouldn't have listed status was already being undertaken by Historic England before she was even in office, the appeal was lodged on the 12th, Historic England reviewed it on the 14th, she took office on the 15th and carried out the findings of the review.

According to Historic England's website, it's only the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport that can remove listed status, so it makes sense that she was the one to do it.
 
Scrote said:
It's already been explained that once the initial repairs had been done the ongoing maintenance costs would have been a lot less than those proferred in the demolition documents.
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Explained where? There's been one claim made by newy that the costs put forward in the independent review by Atkins are exaggerated, and he's done so with nothing to support this. With the greatest of respect to him, I'm more inclined to take Atkins' words. And further to the point, no one here has contradicted Atkins statement that, with the repair and maintenance costs, even exaggerated, would preserve the tower beyond 20 years. It would still need to be torn down by 2040.
 
SmallTown said:
Move on from highlighting Tory corruption?Is this the same "moving on" we were supposed to be doing because brexit is "done" or a different form of moving on?
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If you're claiming that those involved the the demolition of the tower are corrupt you'd better think hard about libeling people. It could get you and the owners of this board in trouble.
On a secondary note, your political U turn is impressive, they say there is nothing more zealous than a convert.😎
 
Screenshot_20210921-140153_Office.jpg

The last part seems key too.
It wasn't de-listed, the initial listing decision was challenged as invalid.

Annulment rather than a divorce.
 
Ex pfc wintergreen said:
If you're claiming that those involved the the demolition of the tower are corrupt you'd better think hard about libeling people. It could get you and the owners of this board in trouble.
On a secondary note, your political U turn is impressive, they say there is nothing more zealous than a convert.😎
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Do you not find it suspicious that the newly crowned culture war secretary immediately over turned the listed building status? And that this was a direct financial benefit for the mayor?

If not, you really need higher standards
 
SmallTown said:
Do you not find it suspicious that the newly crowned culture war secretary immediately over turned the listed building status? And that this was a direct financial benefit for the mayor?

If not, you really need higher standards
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You should drop the condescending replies it does you know favours,
The rest can be investigated by those with full access to all the facts, not message board speculation.
 
TeaCider said:
But it also only took 20 minutes to write an application that got it listed
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Filling in a form isn't the process, you don't fill the form in and as soon as you finish it, it has listed status. That is simply the input to the process which a lot longer than that 20mins otherwise we would have millions of listed buildings.
 
BoroMart said:
Filling in a form isn't the process, you don't fill the form in and as soon as you finish it, it has listed status. That is simply the input to the process which a lot longer than that 20mins otherwise we would have millions of listed buildings.
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She didn't simply answer the phone to remove the listed status either.

There was a longer process to challenge the listing.
 
TeaCider said:
Ahhhh, I hadn't actually realised the application had came from Newyddion.
I only came in to the end of this thread on the morning after it was demolished

So it's a bit earlier than the 10th of September judging from the comments, reading back.

But it also only took 20 minutes to write an application that got it listed, so I'm not surprised that a detailed report on the issues they weren't aware of was able to get it unlisted almost as quickly.
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Friday 3rd September - application for listing 1477897 (Newyddion)
Saturday 4th September -
Sunday 5th September - application for listing 1477842 (Nick Taylor)
Monday 6th September -
Tuesday 7th September -
Wednesday 8th September -
Thursday 9th September -
Friday 10th September - Dorman Long Tower was listed by Veronica Fiorato - 1477990
Saturday 11th September -
Sunday 12th September - application to have the building delisted (apparently)
Monday 13th September - DCMS requested Historic England take a more comprehensive assessment of the site.
Tuesday 14th September - Historic England's 2nd visit noted a greater loss of the buildings fabric since the listing.
Wednesday 15th September - (the date stated as the date demolition would commence in the application to planning)
Thursday 16th September - Building Delisted* by Nadine Dorries less than 4 hours into the job.
Friday 17th September -
Saturday 18th September - (the date the building was due to be demolished)
Sunday 19th September - Building Demolished 1.55am

*on the grounds that it was structurally unsafe and not an example of brutalist architecture.

The 20 minutes was only my own application which focused on the fabric of the building and it's historical significance and architectural merit. the format of historic England's portal is that you answer an bunch of questions relating to age location etc, upload supporting evidence lots of room for cutting and pasting being that so much has been written on Dorman Long Tower. I believe Nick spent the whole of Sunday afternoon doing much the same. You don't write everything from scratch there's a huge amount of information that you can pass on/upload in twenty minutes.. this combined with the other application would would give the experts quite a lot to go through. bearing in mind the listing is not just based on an application, there's the site visit and the options of historians and architects alike to consult. the whole team at historic England did one hell of a job working flat out all week on this.

I doubt very much that Nadine Dorries even wrote the delisting from introductory meetings in her new job, thanking past colleagues on twitter, wandering around the natural history museum taking selfies and posting videos that morning. I know she didn't visit the site and I can take a pretty good guess that her expertise (if any) does not lie in Teesside Heritage or Brutalist Architecture.

From the SoS decision to delist:
'There has also been further very recent demolition, in preparation for the planned total demolition, of which Historic England and the Secretary of State were not aware prior to listing.' - basically demolitions took place after the listing to significantly weaken the structure.

From the Atkins report:

"“The structure, whilst clearly robust and not in imminent danger of collapse"

“The demolition requires a significant amount of preparation and pre-weakening."

"All basement masonry and concrete walls and the two low level side extensions
are to be removed by mechanical means and much of the concrete columns will have the reinforcement bars cut
prior to detonation"
 
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BoroMart said:
not far off, it would seem it was a done deal in no time. Please don't pretend that an established process such as this application has equivalence to her ad hoc decision to revoke an application.
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As I've repeatedly said in this thread, the review was already being undertaken by Historic England before she was even in office.

Her office just signs off on it, just as much as her predecessor presumably signed off on it being listed in the first place.
 
Come on children wind it up. This post has been running for 20 pages and has branched out to discuss various aspects of the topic, each with fair arguments on both sides. In the main the opposing sides of the arguments have treat one another with respect and without the need for too much name calling. Then someone tries to tell other posters that their chosen contribution does not meet with what they want to talk about and the silly arguments and petty veiled name calling starts. Just because people don't want to discuss what you want to talk about doesn't mean you can tell them they are in the wrong for posting. Lets please respect the other users of this board and the many excellent contributions to this particular posts.
 
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