Leeds halts Twin Towers!

Dramatic news from Leeds! Work has has stopped on construction of Leeds' Twin Towers.......

Plans to create Britain's tallest building outside of London have been brought to a halt.

Building work on Lumière - a landmark scheme to build Europe's tallest residential tower block in the heart of Leeds - has been stopped.

Property developer Kevin Linfoot has mothballed construction of the £155 million Lumiere development.

He blamed the credit crunch for halting construction of the glass towers that were set to soar 55 and 33 storeys above the city's skyline.

His company KW Linfoot insisted the move was only temporary.

The foundations for the site have been laid, and KW Linfoot insist that building work will resume when economic conditions improved but could not specify a date.

Investors who have already bought in the scheme will not have their deposits returned as the company says it is still committed to going ahead with the development.

The £115 million Criterion Place "Kissing Towers" development in Leeds has been scrapped and developers are currently revising plans for the site.

In May a futuristic high rise tower block which was to have been the centrepiece of a £160m regeneration of the former Leeds International Pool site was also scrapped.

The 24-storey Spiracle Tower fell victim to the faltering residential property market.

The skyscraper - also known as the "Poppadom Tower" - was designed by London architects Make.

In the same month it was reported that by juggling with millimetres architects had created dozens of extra flats in the plans for Lumiere.

By reducing ceiling heights on every floor of Lumiere by just 5cm, the designers said they had managed to eke out enough space for an extra storey.

The alterations were part of a revised planning application by KW Linfoot, which included increasing the height of the buildings by around a metre so the lifts could run faster, as well as changing the blend of apartments on offer.

This would have created a total of 114 more flats, if Leeds City Council gave the revised plans the go-ahead.

The twin towers were planned to be 172m (55 storeys) and 113m (33 storeys) tall respectively, with 952 homes rather than 838.

The revised plans were submitted to the council and a decision was expected at the beginning of the month, but KW Linfoot joint managing director Richard Dean said no problems were expected.

When completed Lumiere will house around 120 serviced apartments, a covered public winter garden connecting the two towers, offices, a health centre, plus ground floor and mezzanine level retail uses and basement car parking.

Tower 1 will not only be Leeds's tallest building but Europe's tallest residential tower.

Carillion recently won the £155m contract to build Lumiere, which was scheduled to take around four years to complete.