US embassy will move to Battersea

The American Embassy is to quit Grosvenor Square, the Evening Standard has learned.

It is to move to Nine Elms in Battersea after escalating conflict with its Mayfair neighbours over increased security measures since September 2001.

Last year the US State Department asked agents to find a new site for the embassy and it was rumoured clothing tycoon Richard Caring was interested in buying the property.

It is currently rented on a triple nine-year lease from the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate.

Residents had claimed that thousands of lives would be put at risk from an al Qaeda attack which might involve a bomb on the scale of those used by Irish terrorists at Bishopsgate and Docklands.