Olympic architect Thomas Heatherwick's restaurant plans scrapped over toilet troubles

Developer claims plans are dead over council objections about number of toilets

The much-praised existing Thomas Heatherwick café in Little-hampton

Plans for the British engineering genius who designed the London Olympic cauldron to bring radical architecture to a sleepy corner of the south coast have been laid low – by toilet trouble.

Thomas Heatherwick, creator of the London 2012 cauldron, had been lined up to design a new restaurant in Shoreham, West Sussex, by a developer with whom he had previously created an acclaimed café in a nearby seaside town.

But developer Jane Wood claimed that her Shoreham project was dead in the water – because of the local council’s insistence that the 70-seat venue have 12 toilets, not five.

Ms Wood, who has walked away from negotiations, said she had hoped the £1.5m design would bring “a bit of Thomas Heatherwick genius” to the town. Instead the site will remain in its current use – as a large public toilet.

Designer Thomas Heatherwick (Jason Alden)

When Ms Wood began looking into the Shoreham project in 2011, there had been hopes that she and Mr Heatherwick might recreate the success of their East Beach Café in nearby Littlehampton.

With Mr Heatherwick’s design of undulating steel ribbons evoking images of “magically eroded objects”, the East Beach Café has won more than 20 design awards since opening in 2007, plus the admiration of food critics. It was credited with revitalising Littlehampton.

But Ms Wood’s status as the instigator of a “seaside renaissance” and Mr Heatherwick’s reputation as the foremost designer in Britain – also responsible for the new Routemaster buses – appear not to have impressed Adur District Council.

Thomas Heatherwick designed the Olympic Cauldron for London 2012 (Getty)

Ms Wood told Architects’ Journal that she pulled out after the council couldn’t commit to a lease agreement for the site.

“The council wanted 12 toilets in the restaurant, more than double the five which we had in the design. Who needs 12 toilets?” she said.

“You’re spending £1.5m on a building, and fighting over the number of toilets is ridiculous. My business partner said: ‘If you’ve had this much trouble sorting out the lease, imagine what it will be like trying to build this thing’.”

A council spokesman said: “Restaurants do need a certain number of toilets. Providing additional public toilets would have removed any need for the public to come in from the beach to use internal toilets. It is therefore possible that the number of toilets required by law for the restaurant, plus the number we were recommending external to the restaurant to provide public amenity, would have equalled 12.”