Plans to build a new Holocaust memorial in a park next to Parliament have been dealt a blow by the body which cares for the park, saying its sombre nature would “change what is now a relaxed park”.

The Royal Parks weighed into a row over government plans for the large memorial and "learning cantre" at Victoria Tower Gardens in central London with a strongly worded objection.

The charity told Westminster planners the gardens were “a highly sensitive location” and that the structure “would have significant harmful impacts and fundamentally change the historic character and associated vistas in and out of the park”.

“The structure will dominate the park and eclipse the existing listed memorials which are nationally important in their own right,” the letter said. One memorial there is of suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst.

The Imperial War Museum has backed plans to build the £50m memorial and learning centre on the land, which is government-owned.

The Royal Parks also said: “We would not wish to close such a large area, or the possibility of the entire park, to visitors for the three years of its construction.”

Remembering the Holocaust Show all 16 1 /16 Remembering the Holocaust Remembering the Holocaust 80,000 shoes line a display case in Auschwitz I. The shoes of those who had been sent to their deaths were transported back to Germany for use of the Third Reich Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Barracks for prisoners in the vast Auschwitz II (Birkenau) camp. Here slept as many as four per bunk, translating to around one thousand people per barracks. The barracks were never heated in winter, so the living space of inmates would have been the same temperature as outside. Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Sign for the Auschwitz Museum on the snowy streets of Oswiecim, Poland Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The Gateway to hell: The Nazi proclamation that work will set you free, displayed on the entrance gate of Auschwitz I Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A disused watchtower, surveying a stark tree-lined street through Auschwitz I concentration camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Stolen property of the Jews: Numerous spectacles, removed from the possession of their owners when they were selected to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A sign bearing a skull and crossbones barks an order to a person to stop beside the once-electrified fences which reinforced the Auschwitz I camp Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The peace and the evil: Flower tributes line a section of wall which was used for individual and group executions Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Life behind bars: Nazi traps set to hold the Third Reich’s ‘enemies’. In Auschwitz’s years of operation, there were around three hundred successful escapes. A common punishment for an escape attempt was death by starvation Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Burying the evidence: Remains of one of the several Auschwitz-Birkenau gas chambers Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust The three-way railway track at the entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. This was the first sight the new camp arrivals saw upon completion of their journey. Just beside the tracks, husbands and wives, sons and daughters and brothers and sisters were torn from each other. Most never saw their relatives again Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust A group of visitors move through the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Viewed from the main entrance watchtower of Auschwitz-Birkenau Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust "The Final Solution": The scale of the extermination efforts of the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau can be seen by comparing the scale of the two figures at the far left of the image to the size of the figure to the left of the railway tracks' three point split Hannah Bills Remembering the Holocaust Each cattle car would transport up to one hundred people, who could come from all over Europe, sometimes from as far away as Norway or Greece. Typically, people would have been loaded onto the trucks with around three days food supply. The journey to Auschwitz could sometimes take three weeks. Hannah Bills

Its letter warns security measures would lead to queues and congestion.

The “sombre nature” of the memorial would change the nature of what is currently a relaxed park, it said.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said the memorial would honour victims and survivors of the Holocaust and subsequent genocides and educate future generations on the importance of fighting prejudice and persecution.

“No location in Britain is more suitable for the memorial than Victoria Tower Gardens, alongside Parliament where decisions in the lead up to, during and in the aftermath of the Holocaust were made, and amidst prominent memorials commemorating the struggle against slavery, inequality and injustice,” he said.

“The proposals have been developed with great sensitivity to the existing context and character of the gardens.

“We will retain 93 per cent of the open public space, improve views over Parliament and the River Thames and provide a range of accessible seating and a new boardwalk along the embankment.”

The government says no trees will be harmed by the plans.