In a city such as London, with 9mn people, you can’t be sure who is the most unpopular. Especially as Prince Andrew lives near Windsor. But let’s take a guess. The city’s least liked residents right now may be the residents of Neo Bankside.
These rich folk paid millions for flats with glass walls, even though the Tate Modern had planning permission for a viewing platform next door. Then they were surprised that hoi polloi could see them. It seemed the most entitled privacy complaint since Prince Harry’s book came out three weeks ago. It’s like buying a chocolate teapot then suing the water company. Yet on Wednesday the Supreme Court ruled in the residents’ favour.
When I went to the Tate and peered into the flats, I struggled to feel sympathy. They had sleek sofas and designer lights. One of them appeared to be an Arsenal fan. But the residents are right.
The villains here are the Tate — and us, the gawping public. At its peak, the viewing platform attracted 500,000 to 600,000 visitors a year. They waved to the residents, took photos of their flats and posted them on social media. Some brought binoculars. For the residents, the court ruled, it was “much like being on display in a zoo” — presumably without the free food.
The legal question is whether the Tate’s platform constituted a nuisance. The Supreme Court majority ruled that your neighbours can’t be a nuisance if they are using their land in an “ordinary” way. So you can’t complain about the noise of them having sex, but I imagine you might have a case against nonstop orgies.
In the Tate’s case, it’s an art gallery. The ordinary use is for people to look at what’s inside. Maybe there aren’t enough unmounted urinals and unmade beds to keep all the visitors entertained. But the Tate is fine without the viewing platform. Anyway, what even is the view in question? Pretty much all you can see on the south side are the flats, about 30 metres away.
That’s the point: the intrusion by spectators wasn’t incidental, it was deliberate. We can’t get enough of rubbernecking. We can’t stop ourselves from filming strangers or asking for selfies with celebrities. We cannot then complain when people object. Cameraphones raise the stakes for anybody overlooked: if you walk out of your shower and your towel falls down, the result might be on the internet forever.
Critics will see this ruling as a sign of a Nimby nation, where people choose to live next door to a cricket club yet complain about errant balls, or on top of a music venue yet complain about the noise. But this is different. The Tate ruling shouldn’t stop anyone building homes, unless they include a huge viewing platform. It might even reassure residents that developers will think twice about their interests.
And there’s plenty of blame to go round. The Richard Rogers Partnership designed the flats with floor-to-ceiling glass. The developers, who advertised the flats as having “unparalleled views”, didn’t realise the planned Tate extension would have similar “unparalleled views” of its clients’ living areas. The residents might have done some due diligence. Those who live in glass homes, etcetera.
All this is pretty moot, because the Tate’s viewing platform has been closed since the pandemic started. The court will probably find a compromise, such as damages for the flat owners or privacy film on the windows (which apparently doesn’t work in the dark).
But we should learn the lesson. In living cheek-by-jowl, city residents agree to some intrusions. We peek into each other’s windows; we overlook each other’s gardens; we sometimes overhear each other’s arguments. Still there’s a line between neighbourly nosiness and cameraphone-addled nuisance, and you don’t need binoculars to see it. The Tate crossed it.
henry.mance@ft.com
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