| KINGSWAY International Christian Centre (KICC) is to appeal against the decision not to be allowed to build a £70-million mega-church on a derelict site in East London. It already has about £20 million with which to start building, its CEO, Pastor Dipo Oluyomi, said last week. The church has been looking for a new site since it sold its land to be part of the 2012 Olympic village.
The refusal by the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation (LTGDC) planning committee was based on “subjective” judgement, Pastor Oluyomi said. The plans for the 8000-seater church complex (pictured above), to be built on a 13-acre site in an area designated for industrial development, were turned down because of transport, community, and employment issues, he said. KICC’s accounts suggest that it has already spent about £1 million on the plans.
“We are like an industry. We produce law-abiding human beings, who are not on the dole, and whose training will affect society for the better in so many ways,” he said last week. “We already employ 75 people directly.. . . We could provide employment for up to 500.
“We have shown that we can deal with the traffic to and from the centre. There are no questions that we have not answered. But they seem to have subjective reasons for thinking that we cannot do what we say we can do.”
LTGDC’s planning committee said that it had hoped for more jobs from the site. It was concerned that visitors would travel to the church by car because of the shortage of public transport. Its chairman, Councillor Conor McAuley, said it could not approve what would be a “significant departure from the established plan for the area”.
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