PLANS to transform one of London’s landmarks, Battersea power station, into a multi- million-pound leisure complex are to be shelved in favour of a housing scheme.

For 13 years a secretive Hong Kong developer has promised to transform the redundant Thameside hulk, renowned for its “table leg” chimneys, with a £1.5 billion investment to draw 10,000 visitors a day.

Now, six years after the complex was due to open, the power station’s owner Victor Hwang has applied for permission to build apartments and offices on a neighbouring site rather than reopen the power station first as a leisure complex.

The move would save him about £300m. Hwang is in negotiations to sell a controlling stake in the 38-acre site to rival developers, who are also likely to scale back the dramatic plans for the power station and concentrate on building housing there.

Today the 1930s edifice that once generated a fifth of London’s electricity and became an icon when it featured on Pink Floyd’s 1977 Animals album, lies roofless and rotting. Campaigners who support the building’s reuse say it is “a scandal”.

Keith Garner, an architect and leading member of the Battersea Power Station Community Group, said: “Hwang should get off the site, because he is clearly not serious about doing the work on the power station.”

Among the proposals by Hwang’s development company, Parkview, have been a 16-screen cinema, nightclubs, boutiques and 40 restaurants and bars in the power station itself.

But rival developers believe competition from a proposed £1.6 billion mall with 300 shops the other side of the Thames at Shepherd’s Bush and the collapse of plans for a rail link from Victoria station have rendered that impossible.

Hwang’s proposal to simply secure the “shell and core” of the building, designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, includes fixing a plastic roof across the central boiler house, installing new structural steelwork and floors and rebuilding the chimneys.

“The idea is to do as little as possible, protect the old building and get the housing on site,” a source close to Parkview said.

A spokesman for the company insisted it would still create “a leisure and entertainment complex” in the power station. He denied the building would be left “as a big empty hulk”.

Parkview’s application to change its plans for the site will be decided next month by Wandsworth borough council amid concerns about links between the company and the council. This weekend the Royal Town Planning Institute promised to investigate “conflict of interest” claims against Parkview’s planning consultant, Ian Thompson.

Until January 2004, Thompson was Wandsworth’s borough planner and oversaw a series of planning applications from Parkview that won approval. About two months after he left Wandsworth he went to work for Parkview on a part-time basis, for a reported salary of about £75,000 a year.

A Parkview spokesman confirmed Thompson’s role but the company and Wandsworth borough council denied any conflict of interest.

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