A large office development near the Tower of London has been redesigned to remove the proposed heritage and cultural centre, but planned access to a roof terrace has been retained.

The new building, which secured planning permission in 2023, will replace a rather tired 1960s glass-clad office block with a more restrained brick-clad office block with a series of stepped-back floors and roof terraces.

The development sits on the busy road that runs past the Tower of London, and is directly opposite All Hallows church, the oldest (if heavily modified) church in the City of London. At the moment, the dark glass building presents a rather forbidding appearance, its only redeeming feature being the reflections in its glass of the more interesting buildings opposite it. A row of small shops runs along the ground floor.

The 2023-approved scheme would have redeveloped the site, with fewer, larger retail outlets on the ground floor and, in the middle of the building, a large heritage centre.

However, during marketing of the development to potential occupants, the developers found that the design wasn’t finding favour, mainly due to the ground-floor layout. The tenants generally wanted a larger office entrance and less retail space around the ground floor.

After some work, the developer found a tenant for the site, if there were changes to how the ground floor was laid out.

An amended scheme has now been approved, which scraps the heritage centre, but introduces a new “tourist touchdown centre”, which is basically a tourist information centre similar to the one next to St Paul’s Cathedral.

It also has a modest improvement in how access to the 12th floor roof terrace will work. It was going to be split between two entrances for weekday and weekend entry, but will now be via a single entrance through the tourist centre.

Another change is that the roof terrace, which was going to be open during the week plus two weekends a month, will now be closed during the week but open every weekend.

Which is probably a better deal for most visitors.

The office tenant is the insurance firm Lockton, which is currently based in a blue-glass building next to nearby St Botolph’s church and had been looking for a new site for its headquarters. They expect to increase their staff from 1,500 to 3,000 when the new building is ready.

The changes to the development were approved by the City of London’s planning sub-committee, and construction is expected to be completed in early 2029.

And that’s when London gets another roof terrace to visit.