UK government postpones ruling on Chinese embassy over blacked-out plans until October

The British government on Friday delayed the deadline for deciding whether to accept China’s plans to build Europe’s largest embassy in London until October after Beijing failed to explain why the designs included blacked-out regions.

China’s plans to construct a new embassy on the site of a two-century-old building near the Tower of London have been halted for three years due to resistance from local residents, MPs, and Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigners in Britain.

Politicians in the United Kingdom and the United States have cautioned the government not to allow China to establish the embassy on the site, fearing it would be used as a spy base.

DP9, the planning consultancy working for the Chinese government, said its client felt it would be inappropriate to provide full internal layout plans, saying additional drawings provided an acceptable level of detail, after the government asked why several areas were blacked out in drawings.

“The Applicant considers the level of detail shown on the unredacted plans is sufficient to identify the main uses,” DP9 said in a letter to the government.

“In these circumstances, we consider it is neither necessary nor appropriate to provide additional more detailed internal layout plans or details.”

The British government’s department of housing said in reply it would now rule on whether the project can go ahead by October 21 rather than by September 9 because it needed more time to consider the responses.

Luke de Pulford, executive director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, a group with ties to an international network of politicians critical of China which revealed the letter, said: “These explanations are far from satisfactory.”

De Pulford, a long-standing critic of plans for the embassy, said the “assurances amount to ’trust me bro’”.

The Chinese embassy in London expressed “serious concern” over the government’s response.

The embassy said host countries have an “international obligation” to support the construction of diplomatic buildings.

“The Chinese side urges the UK side to fulfil its obligation and approve the planning application without delay,” the embassy said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the embassy said claims that the building could have “secret facilities” used to harm Britain’s national security were “despicable slandering”.

The Chinese government purchased Royal Mint Court in 2018 but its requests for planning permission to build the new embassy there were rejected by the local council in 2022. Chinese President Xi Jinping asked Prime Minister Keir Starmer last year to intervene.

Starmer’s central government took control of the planning decision last year.