Ivy owner Richard Caring wins council permission to close part of Onslow Square, a busy ambulance and bus route, for two weeks
Richard Caring, the billionaire owner of the celebrity hotspot restaurant the Ivy and private members’ club Annabel’s, has won permission to close a main road in South Kensington, centralCaring, who has built up an estimated personal fortune of more than £1bn from his clubs and restaurants empire, which also includes the Sexy Fish in Mayfair, secured permission from the council to close part of Onslow Square for two weeks in order to install a crane to carry the mature trees over a row of...
“It is absolutely wrong that a single man, with a huge fortune is able to disrupt the lives of thousands of people,” Erb, a software developer, told the Guardian as one of the trees, estimated to weigh more than five tonnes, was lifted over his home. “They often close off the pavement as well and it’s beginning to feel a bit like we live behind a barricade.
The council has already issued an enforcement notice on Caring ordering him to remove three “incongruous and dominant” windows, which it said “fail to preserve the character and appearance” of the conservation area.Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer Onslow Square, which links South Kensington underground station to Fulham Road, is used by the 14, 49, 345 and 414 bus routes, which have all been placed on diversion. The road is also an important thoroughfare for ambulances carrying patients to the the Royal Marsden and Chelsea and Westminster hospitals. The emergency services had to be informed of the closure.