[altacc]

Sounds like you're in the US (apologies if assumption is incorrect). If so, and for other, it’s worth considering that each country has its own way of doing things and that context is important.

Whilst I am sometimes in despair about the decisions of planning committees across the UK, there is more often than not a benefit to them. The councils across the UK seeks to protect historic buildings. In this case the only building in the street to survive WW2 bombing raids. In a city and country where WW2 & the blitz is still part of the national psyche, this give it extra value. Culture changes very slowly and is built upon the past. The UK has made a collective decision to include in it's culture maintaining what it sees as important legacies of the past.

The context of the destruction and punishment for deliberately disobeying the local planning laws is that developers across the UK are regularly asking forgiveness, not permission. They will destroy and old building, pay a fine, and then profit handsomely from the new building they put in it's place. Orders to restore illegally demolished buildings are done precisely because they require a lot of human & financial effort, which is the point. Significantly harsh financial punishments seem to be needed to make a development company alter its behaviour, because the smaller financial punishments obviously aren't working.

In this case, the landowner knew the history of the building when they bought it and knew they didn't have permission to develop the land but they willfully ignored this and tried to get away with knocking it down. They got caught and were made to pay a financial penalty for their actions. The "human effort" you're worried about paid people's wages, so definitely not wasted for both the workers and the local residents.

[torstenvl]

First off, thank you for being one of the few people in this thread to have a rational discussion. I ultimately disagree with you, but at least you didn't go all Reddit like so many others here.

I think there are a couple points I'd like to make, to see if any of them change your mind at all.

- First, you bring up what the landowner knew when they bought the building. However, three years after they bought it, the law was changed to make it harder to convert pubs to other uses. FTA: Watson was involved in campaigning for legislation in 2017 that went some way to stopping pubs from being converted into shops under permitted development rules – full planning permission is now required.

- Second, it's shocking to the conscience that a local government unit like the Westminster council can order someone to perform labor. In the United States and most developed other countries, involuntary labor was outlawed over a century ago, with exceptions for sentences upon conviction of a crime. Is that really not the case in the UK? Can your local council just order you to build whatever they want?

[altacc]

As I said elsewhere, planning permission has been required since 1948 and so is by no means a new thing. Restrictive planning rules are a constant for architects & developers. Even the permitted development rules can be quite restrictive and wouldn't apply to this development. The 2017 law change is a moot point as the building was demolished in 2015.

There was no "forcing someone to perform labor". The owner of the development company was not required to physically rebuild himself, there was a requirement to make good what they had willfully damaged. If you willfully damage someone else's property is it involuntary labour for legal redress to force you to pay to repair to replace what you damaged? The obvious answer is no, you're facing a financial, not physical, penalty.

[toyg]

If you infringe building regulations, yes, you can be ordered to redress the situation at your expense. Typically that means demolishing illegal structures; in this case it was the opposite, which is pretty rare but can happen.

For the record, this is common throughout Europe, it's not a UK-specific thing.

> three years after they bought it, the law was changed

That's tough, but dura lex sed lex.