AmTrust Financial Services is preparing plans to demolish Exchequer Court in the City of London and replace it with a roughly 300-metre, 70-storey office tower, creating one of the largest additions yet proposed for the Square Mile's eastern cluster. The scheme, being overseen with former Canary Wharf Group chairman Sir George Iacobescu, is expected to provide about 1 million sq ft of office space. Public consultation is due later in October, with a formal planning application to the City of London Corporation expected in early 2027 and completion targeted for 2033 if consent and subsequent delivery stages progress as planned.
The proposal remains at pre-application stage. No main contractor appointment, construction contract or confirmed start on site has been announced, and the detailed structural, foundation and construction strategy has yet to enter the public planning record.
Canary Wharf's high-rise construction landscape in September 2026, where Sir George Iacobescu previously led the district's development. Photo: London Construction Magazine.
Exchequer Court Would Be Demolished for the New Tower
The development would replace the existing Exchequer Court office building at 33 St Mary Axe, immediately within one of the most intensively developed parts of the City. AmTrust already has an established presence at the address, while the proposed tower would increase the site's commercial capacity dramatically. At around 300 metres, the building would sit close to the upper end of London's office-tower pipeline and would be comparable in overall height with One London, the consented replacement for 1 Undershaft. That project is particularly useful as a construction-stage comparison: deconstruction of the existing St Helen's Tower is already creating workload, but the main new-build programme sits later in the delivery sequence. LCM examined that distinction in its analysis of London skyscrapers that remain in demolition, pre-construction or delayed delivery stages.
The same distinction applies at Exchequer Court. A proposal to demolish the existing building and construct a 70-storey replacement does not yet establish a demolition date, enabling-works package or main-build commencement. Those milestones will depend on planning, design development, vacant-possession arrangements and the eventual procurement strategy. For contractors, the site nevertheless points towards a substantial future package sequence if the scheme progresses: existing-building deconstruction would precede substructure and tower construction, followed later by the structural frame, façade, major building services, vertical transportation, fit-out and public-realm works. The precise methodology and package boundaries are not yet published.
City Plan 2040 Gives the Proposal a Tall-Building Context
The timing of the proposal follows an important planning development for the Square Mile. On 14 October, the Planning Inspectorate published its final report on City Plan 2040 and concluded that the plan is sound subject to modifications, while the existing City Cluster tall-building contours were retained. The City Corporation's examination record confirms that the inspectors supported retaining the cluster contours following further consideration of tall buildings and heritage. The wider plan identifies the City Cluster as one of the Square Mile locations where tall buildings can be accommodated, while still requiring proposals to respond to protected views, heritage assets and their effect at street level.
City Plan 2040 also seeks at least 1.2 million sq m of additional office floorspace by 2040. A development delivering about 93,000 sq m of offices would therefore be commercially substantial within that pipeline, although inclusion within the tall-building cluster does not determine the outcome of an individual planning application. Height will consequently be only one part of the assessment. The City has developed detailed contour-based controls informed by the London View Management Framework, St Paul's Cathedral, the Tower of London and other strategic and local views. Its City Plan 2040 tall-building policies also place considerable emphasis on the relationship between tall buildings and public realm at ground level.
3,500 Sq M of the Scheme Could Be Given to Public Use
AmTrust intends to allocate around 3,500 sq m of the proposed development to public use, out of a total building area of roughly 100,000 sq m. Early plans include a ground-floor courtyard and gardens at an upper level, although the design remains at an early stage ahead of consultation and planning submission.
Those spaces will eventually feed directly into the building's architectural and engineering development. On a tower of this scale, public areas, pedestrian routes and elevated gardens can influence structural grids, façade design, vertical circulation, servicing and wind-microclimate mitigation, but detailed solutions for Exchequer Court have not yet been published and should not be inferred from the current concept.
Rights of light will also form part of the development environment around such a large addition to the cluster. Real-estate lawyers at Stephenson Harwood have already identified the Exchequer Court proposal as a reminder that rights of light remain a separate consideration from planning permission, particularly on densely developed City sites where neighbouring ownership and development potential can influence programme and negotiations.
Engineering Team and Procurement Remain to Be Revealed
Much of the information most relevant to the construction supply chain is still absent because the scheme has not reached formal planning submission. Publicly available material reviewed by LCM does not yet establish the structural engineer, civil engineer, MEP consultant, façade engineer, fire engineer, principal contractor or main construction procurement route. Foundation and basement strategy will be particularly important once technical documents emerge. London's tallest buildings routinely have to reconcile enormous vertical and overturning loads with existing basements, neighbouring foundations, utilities, archaeology and transport infrastructure below the City. LCM's review of the structural engineers behind London's tallest buildings showed how schemes including 22 Bishopsgate have used retained foundations and complex transfer structures rather than treating redevelopment sites as empty plots.
There is currently no evidence that Exchequer Court will adopt the same approach. Whether existing substructure can be retained, what piling system will be required and how the tower will resist wind loads should become clearer only when the structural and environmental material accompanying the planning application is published. Procurement is similarly early. No publicly announced PCSA or main-contract award has been identified, while no construction cost, development cost or GDV has been disclosed. Those unknowns matter because a 2033 completion target places the project within a period when several other large City schemes are expected to be competing for demolition, concrete, structural steel, façade, MEP and specialist high-rise capacity.
LCM's London planning pipeline for 2027–2030 already identifies the City as one of the capital's most concentrated future construction markets, with One London, 99 Bishopsgate and other commercial projects generating long programmes of deconstruction, basement engineering, structural work and fit-out rather than a single common start date. For Exchequer Court, the next meaningful milestone is therefore not a construction start but the public consultation and subsequent planning submission expected in early 2027. That application should provide the first detailed evidence of the project's architecture, engineering team, environmental studies, heritage response and construction assumptions behind AmTrust's 2033 delivery target.
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