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7th January, 2026
How did the damaging Maltings design get to this stage, slated for construction to start in the summer of 2026 and set to mar Berwick’s famously beautiful skyline from 2028?
Berwick Maltings from the Old Bridge, detail of visualisation from the December 2025 application
Planning started in 2019 when a £121k feasibility study (which is being kept hidden from the public) secured a funding commitment from Borderlands for a rebuild rather than a refurbishment. But the real rot started in 2021 with a limited choice of large, modernist architecture firms in the competition, none of whom were likely to design sympathetically. The absence of smaller or local architects was criticised within the profession at the time. None of the judges had heritage credentials or were answerable to voters.
The Borderlands funders wanted “an architectural beacon visible from the train” – essentially a visible political statement about the effectiveness of the Borderlands body. Most people and institutions in Berwick were desperate not to rock the boat and were fed the lie that funding might be pulled if there were any delay caused by dissent (fast forward many months, and the design process rumbles on).
This might not have mattered had the design been sensitive to its location. The 2024 design had pitched roofs, allowing the large building to sit relatively comfortably amongst its older neighbours and eliciting a high degree of public support. But the March 2025 version, with all flat roofs thanks to an edict by Historic England for the design to be “more modern”, as the architect was at pains to point out, caused a slump in support and triggered the campaign against the design. The result was over 1,000 petition signatures and 157 objections.
Despite this outpouring of revulsion against the attack on Berwick’s beauty, checks and balances simply melted away, with our heritage bodies feeling pressured into not questioning the design. The project was too big to fail, and the Maltings Trust was too powerful an influence in Berwick to contradict. The county council were keen to replace their building that some say has not been maintained well, and of course their deeply indebted development company, Advance, was motivated to pocket a large management fee.
Historic England, initially urging caution around the “beacon” wording, had been drawn into the design process and there was no way they were going to rock the boat either – to the dismay of many who believed Historic England when they boasted of protecting our historic settings. So this organisation was the trump card Northumberland County Council (NCC) needed to dismiss heritage concerns at their Strategic Committee meeting in August 2025.
The depressing truth is that government organisations (of which Historic England is one) look after their mates, and if it’s government interests versus the public’s, then The Blob wins. The fact that Historic England’s glowing testimony failed to concede any harm whatsoever, when even the application acknowledged “less than substantial harm” to the conservation area, is strong evidence of their keenness to help ensure the project’s smooth progress regardless of the effect on Berwick’s historic skyline and the town’s tourist appeal.
You can get a better idea of the pressure Historic England have bowed to if you ask the question: “What would happen if they criticised the design they helped to mould?” They would also have to criticise a lot of other utilitarian buildings and pick fights with county councils – even if they hadn’t already been steeped in modernist ideology, as the building and heritage sectors are. Now you can probably see why pragmatism is the order of the day, rather than face the more difficult task of honouring commitments to protect our environment.
NCC officers also misrepresented the conservation officer’s view as contentment with the plan, in contrast with the reality of his more nuanced advice for councillors to weigh harms and benefits.
With NCC officers praising the design and pouring scorn on the “incongruity” of pitched roofs, the whole twisted narrative was swallowed by all but one of the county councillors, who with some exceptions were not experienced or familiar with (or interested in) heritage issues. The single county councillor abstained having declared the design the ugliest building he’d ever seen.
There were more objections from the public on this application than on any other application in Berwick, many of them heartfelt pleas to stop the madness. But like the Victorian Society’s and Georgian Group’s strong warnings about the harm of the design, these objections were not discussed by councillors in the agenda item that had been placed, perhaps deliberately, at the end of a very long session in the evening.
In December 2025, NCC submitted a revised application for an even taller building, with larger expanses of plate glass window in the sensitive south façade, more metal cladding, and uninspired striped metal and brick ‘detailing’ (the modernist’s substitute for the taboo of ornament).
Now NCC are taking the risk that after partially demolishing the existing Maltings building, the subsequent survey will allow them to go ahead. If it’s bad news, NCC will have spent over £5m in vain and ended up with a shell of a building and a big hole in their budget.
The December 2025 application with design modifications is live on NCC’s portal at the time of writing, and the public is encouraged to submit comments. For more information, see our objection page. You can also sign our petition.