The proposal to build a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre in Victoria Tower Gardens, the small park immediately south of the Palace of Westminster, has been under active political and legal dispute since 2015. In 2026, after more than a decade of delays, court challenges, and planning battles, Parliament passed legislation removing the legal protections that had been the main obstacle to the project. It is now closer to being built than at any previous point, though the controversy that has surrounded it has not disappeared.
The proposal
The UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation was established following the 2015 report of the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission, set up by David Cameron, which found that Britain lacked a major national memorial comparable to those in Germany, France, and the United States. The commission recommended a prominent central London site with a direct connection to the institutions of British democracy. Victoria Tower Gardens, overlooked by the Houses of Parliament on the north bank of the Thames, was selected.
The architectural competition was won in 2017 by a design by Adjaye Associates and the sculptor Ron Arad. The design features 23 tall bronze fins arranged in a formation that visitors walk between, intended to evoke loss and rupture, with an underground learning centre beneath the gardens. David Adjaye, who subsequently faced separate professional difficulties, stepped back from the project. The design itself remains the basis of the proposal.
The opposition
The controversy has never been about whether to commemorate the Holocaust. It has been about this location and this design. Victoria Tower Gardens is a small Grade II listed historic green space that already contains several existing memorials, including the Buxton Memorial Fountain commemorating the emancipation of slaves. Heritage bodies including Historic England, the London Gardens Trust, and the Victorian Society argued that the underground learning centre in particular would permanently alter the character of the park and that the site sits within the buffer zone of a UNESCO World Heritage designation covering the Palace of Westminster.
A planning inquiry in 2021 resulted in an inspector’s report recommending against the project on grounds that the harm to the park outweighed the public benefit. The government disagreed and sought to override the inspector’s recommendation. When normal planning routes proved insufficient, Parliament legislated directly to remove the park’s statutory protections, a step critics described as bypassing the ordinary processes of heritage protection and local consultation. Costs, originally estimated at around £50 million, have risen to figures in the range of £100 million to £200 million in more recent reporting.
Opposition has not come only from heritage campaigners. Some Holocaust survivors, historians, and Jewish communal organisations have also raised objections, arguing that the Imperial War Museum, which already has substantial Holocaust galleries and a dedicated educational programme, represents a better use of resources, and that the Westminster location, while symbolically powerful, is physically unsuitable for the scale of institution being proposed.
The arguments for
Supporters, who include successive prime ministers, the main Jewish representative bodies, and a broad parliamentary majority, argue that proximity to Parliament is precisely the point. A memorial that millions of visitors, schoolchildren, and legislators encounter as a physical presence beside the seat of British democracy makes a statement that a museum gallery, however well designed, cannot. The absence of a dedicated national memorial has been, by comparison with almost every other major European country, conspicuous. The learning centre would provide an educational resource that complements rather than duplicates what the Imperial War Museum does.
Where things stand
With the 2026 legislation in place, the remaining obstacles are primarily practical: funding, detailed design approvals, and the management of construction in a constrained central London site. The project has moved from being legally blocked to being legally permitted, which is a significant change in its status. Whether the opposition that has accompanied it for a decade will translate into further legal or political challenge remains to be seen.
See also
- Imperial War Museum Holocaust Galleries
- The British Dimension
- Churchill and the Holocaust
- Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre
- Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Berlin
- Holocaust Memorial Day
- The Living Memory Problem
Sources
- Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission, Britain’s Promise to Remember, HMSO, 2015
- UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, Design and Programme, ukhmd.org.uk
- Planning Inspectorate, Report on the UK Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre, 2022
- House of Commons Library, Holocaust Memorial Bill: Progress of the Bill, commonslibrary.parliament.uk, 2026
- Historic England, Response to the UK Holocaust Memorial Proposal, 2019
- London Gardens Trust, Victoria Tower Gardens Campaign, londongardenstrust.org