BIRMINGHAM COUNCIL’S decision to demolish the city’s iconic Ringway Centre ignited fierce criticism from campaigners today.

Activists lambasted the “devastating assault” on Birmingham’s heritage and argued that it conflicts with the council's own zero-carbon pledges.

Last week the council’s planning committee narrowly approved plans to flatten the brutalist structure by just one vote. 

In its place, developer Commercial Estates Group are due to erect three glass tower blocks, reaching up to 59 stories high. The Smallbrook Queensway proposal would build 1,750 apartments, with a 15 per cent “baseline” offer of affordable housing. Birmingham’s standard target is 35 per cent.

The Twentieth Century Society, a group campaigning for the preservation of modern architectural heritage, placed the Ringway at the top of its at risk register earlier this year.

Oli Marshall, the charity’s campaigns manager, called the planning decision “another devastating assault on the city’s post-war heritage.”

He argued it was also “completely at odds” with the council’s commitment to go zero-carbon by 2030.

The built environment accounts for around 40 per cent of Britain’s carbon emissions, government stats show.

But researchers found that much of this is “embodied carbon” emitted during the construction process, with demolition significantly contributing to the environmental burden.

Mary Keating, co-founder of Brutiful Birmingham, which has been campaigning to save the building since 2016, said: “You knock down a building, which has used tons of carbon to create it.

“You’ve got to get rid of all that rubble and embodied carbon, and then start again.”

She said that the campaigners “had to jump up and down” over gaps in the planners’ report, which failed to address the full environmental impact of the plans.

Birmingham Modernist Society, Brutiful Birmingham, Zero Carbon House and Twentieth Century Society, compiled an alternative plan demonstrating how the building could be retrofitted and repurposed. However it was not considered by the planning committee.

Following the council's decision, a six-week grace period has commenced before the demolition plans are set into motion.