\n Published on
\n 03\/12\/2025 – 20:02 GMT+1\n <\/p>\n
China blasted the UK government on Wednesday for its latest delay in deciding whether to approve the construction of a huge new embassy in London.<\/p>\n
British authorities said on Tuesday that a planned decision by 10 December would be pushed back to 20 January following mounting security concerns.<\/p>\n
“The UK’s repeated delay in granting approval is completely unjustified and the reasons they cited are untenable,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said.<\/p>\n
The government is “strongly dissatisfied,” he added.<\/p>\n
The plans for the embassy close to London’s financial district and sensitive data cables have been stalled for years.<\/p>\n
The proposed structure at Royal Mint Court, near the Tower of London, would be the largest embassy in Europe, covering 20,000 square metres.<\/p>\n
Critics have raised concerns that the building would be used as a base for espionage and lawmakers from across the political spectrum have urged the government to reject the proposal.<\/p>\n
The UK government’s planning agency said the decision had been postponed to allow more time to consider it.<\/p>\n
“The Home Office and Foreign Office have provided views on particular security implications, and have been clear throughout that a decision shouldn\u2019t be taken until we affirm that those considerations have been completed or resolved,” Tom Wells, a spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Critics have suggested the decision was delayed amid preparations for Starmer’s expected visit to Beijing early next year.<\/p>\n
Additional sources \u2022 AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published on 03\/12\/2025 – 20:02 GMT+1 China blasted the UK government on Wednesday for its latest delay in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":297318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[891,119860,59,57,58,388,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-297317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-china","tag-embassy","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-london","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/297318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}