Queen Court RTM halts central London basement conversion

The residents, who have an RTM, have successfully obtained an injunction to stop the work after discovering the developer had breached safety regulations and may have invalidated the building’s £15 million insurance policy, the Telegraph reports.

However, the basement came with existing planning consent from Camden Council to develop a one-bedroom flat, and this had been granted in spite of previous objections.

The case indicates the feverish state of the London property market.

Average property prices in the area are £768,669.

Curiously, Queen Court was once home to the heroic British secret agent Tommy Yeo-Thomas, known as the ‘White Rabbit’, who was captured in Nazi-occupied France, tortured and subsequently imprisoned along with other British agents at Buchenwald concentration camp.

His widow – although they were never formally married – lived in a small flat near the Sanderson Hotel, north of Oxford Circus, where the founder of this publication interviewed her for the Daily Telegraph in 1996.