Green Lanes Methodist Church to become seven storey tower block
No affordable housing: council says ‘exceptions are not uncommon when it can be justified’. Photograph: Adam Barnett
Green Lanes Methodist Church is set to become a seven storey tower block as part of a development that has been met with hostility by local residents, who say the council is paying ‘lip-service’ to their concerns.
The plan to rebuild the church with a nursery and a place of worship on the ground floor and six storeys of flats above was approved by the council on Wednesday 5 December. Cllr Linda Smith was the only member of the planning committee to vote against the proposals.
Oliver Cox, a local resident and member of the Burma, Arakan and Clissold Tenants and Residents Association, said he was shocked by the decision. “It doesn’t feel like I’m living in a democracy,” he said after the vote. Mr Cox said he would be seeking legal advice on a judicial review.
Residents object to the size of the new block, which will be the tallest in the area so close to a main road, affecting the amount of sunlight reaching local flats and allotments. They are, in addition, concerned about the resulting reduction in open space, which the council is committed to preserving in its Core Strategy.
Residents also object to the planned disruption of New River Walk, a historical trail through the borough that dates back to the reign of James I, and which will celebrate its 400th anniversary next year.
Mr Cox criticised the council report which informed the planning committee about the application. He said the report reduced local residents’ objections to basic headings, whilst the case in favour of the proposals was stated at length.
“They’ve only been presented with one side of the argument,” said Mr Cox, whose kitchen window overlooks the site of the proposed building. “It’s quite extraordinary.”
Thierry Ploum, an architect and local resident who sent a 16 page objection letter to the planning officer, said the council’s lack of historical research about the site was “staggering.”
The plans for the tower block are at odds with Hackney council’s pledges to create affordable housing, as none of the accommodation it provides will qualify. The Council’s report states: “Officers have taken the view that whilst no affordable housing is proposed as part of the development this should not constitute a grounds for refusing the application as there are still substantive benefits to the local community.
“However, a review mechanism will be included [to] ensure that if residential values do increase, monies can be clawed back towards affordable housing.”
Mustafa Korel, a Hackney Green Party spokesperson, criticised the proposals. “It’s another typical example of big developers swanning into Hackney without consulting the people who actually live there,” he said. “Why can’t developers look at the heritage of the place? Looking at the area rather than what they want to impose on the area?
“It’s totally unfair that it might cause damage to that area without a proper assessment being done.”
Mr Korel also criticised the planning report and the council, saying: “It makes me really angry what the subcommittee said about affordable housing, because it’s not clear what community support or other benefit it might bring to the area.
“What’s the point of having a policy you’re not going to keep to? You pick and choose as and when you want to? That’s not a democracy. That’s a design by Hackney council to invite gentrification and a fractured community.”
Cathy Bird, Superintendent Minister at the church, said at the meeting that the church is in need of redevelopment and could not secure funding another way. They are therefore working in partnership with London Wharf, a development company.
A spokesperson for project developers London Wharf said that churches are “not development experts,” and that some churches they work with are “facing an uncertain future.” Speaking before the planning committee’s decision, he said that council officers had looked at residents’ objections and that they “don’t find any merit in them.” He said they “have recommended the other way” and been “very complimentary” about the proposals, which he said would “provide community services including nursery facilities, for which there is much demand, provided at a reasonable rate and of a high quality, so the kids can have a better play space.”
A spokesperson for Hackney Council defended its report, saying that “objections are always summarised in the officer’s report as are all consultee responses,” and that “full responses are publicly available to view on request.”
On the absence of affordable housing in the plans, the spokesperson said: “Exceptions are not uncommon when it can be justified. In this case the proposal includes providing new and enhanced community facilities as well as rebuilding a new church.
“The New River historic river bed does run through the site on its eastern boundary. The proposed new building on site would partially encroach onto the route of the historic river bed. However, it is not statutorily protected or protected through planning policy from being developed on.
“There is a slight reduction of open space on site, but planning policy allows exceptions to be made where the new open space is of a better quality which is applicable in this case.”
Will this block the pathway from Clissold Crescent to Green Lanes past the allotments? Isn’t that a right of way?
The flats in the proposals are all private tenure (as opposed to affordable) and, as such, the recently introduced Community Infrastructure Levy would be payable on them. The levy would be payable to the London Borough of Hackney. The levy is not payable on affordable housing. The relief for affordable housing was intended to encourage developers to build affordable housing, but we may wonder if it has instead given London Boroughs a financial incentive to grant planning permission for private developments, even if they have to bend a few planning policy rules to do so.
At one stage in the planning sub-committee meeting, the objectors sat in absolute disbelief as we saw a planning officer, when asked by the Chair where the New River was, point to the wrong side of the site. We also sat in disbelief as the applicant’s planning consultant claimed that the drawings were accurate, when we had shown in our objections clear photographic and other evidence that there were serious and significant errors. You did not need to be a planning officer or a planning consultant to know that some of the information that was being given to our elected representatives on the committee, both by the applicant’s planning consultant and by the planning officers, was quite obviously incorrect. You merely needed to have some knowledge of the area and to have spent some time looking at the drawings. Yet we were forbidden by the rules of the meeting from highlighting obvious errors in the answers given to the Chair. The objectors only have 5 minutes between them to speak and once you have had your share of the five minutes, you cannot utter another word unless asked a question.
So we have been told, by people who clearly had not taken the time even to understand the location of the historic New River on the site, that the points that we raised were somehow invalid.
When the Chair questioned the applicant’s planning consultant on key planning policy matters, we heard the consultant choose his words very carefully, misdirecting the committee by saying that the Open Space on the site is ‘not Public Open Space’ – an irrelevant fact that may well have given the impression to the committee that that would have some bearing on whether a ‘net loss’ of the Open Space would be permitted under Core Strategy Planning Policy. In fact, no ‘net loss’ is permitted to either designated ‘Public Open Space’ or to designated ‘Other Open Space’, which is the category to which the churchyard belongs. ‘Net loss’ is only permitted to ‘Amenity Green Space’ (generally shared space on housing estates). The planning officers, who had had months to check the wording of the relevant policy, then made vague statements supporting the applicant’s misdirection, unproven with reference to quoted planning policy. The end result was that the committee of our elected representatives was, quite frankly, misled.
To demonstrate this, I draw your attention to the assertion by the planning department that “There is a slight reduction of open space on site, but planning policy allows exceptions to be made where the new open space is of a better quality which is applicable in this case.”
Firstly, the reduction in Open Space is 95 sq m or more – equivalent to the footprint of two terraced houses – hardly ‘slight’ and without doubt significant. If Hackney is now of the opinion that 95 sq m of building footprint is ‘insignificant’, residents may well bear that in mind when applying for planning consent for house extensions!
Secondly, I have written to the planning department to request that they prove their claim regarding the relevant open space planning policy and that they do so by providing quotes from adopted planning policy. I have not yet received their proof. However, I can prove, by providing quotes from adopted planning policy, that what they say is incorrect.
The churchyard is designated on the adopted Hackney Core Strategy Proposals Map as ‘Open Space excluding Amenity Green Space’. That means that it is Open Space but not Amenity Green Space. The Planning Department has confirmed that it agrees that it is not Amenity Green Space.
Table 8.1 on page 129 of the adopted Hackney Core Strategy, shows that churchyards (and allotments, incidentally) come under the category ‘Other Open Space (designated)’. The table also shows that whilst Public Open Space is also a form of designated space, Amenity Green Space is not designated.
So it is all very clear, the churchyard is ‘Other Open Space (designated)’, but it is not the undesignated Amenity Space.
Then we look at Policy 26 on page 132 of the adopted Hackney Core Strategy. The final three bullet points in the blue frame on page 132 are for Amenity Green Space, so we ignore them as irrelevant. The first three bullet points are the relevant ones and the relevant text states:
“There will be no loss of open space within Hackney’s network of public and other designated open spaces as identified on the Proposals Map and Table 8.1 unless:
“there is compensatory contiguous replacement of better or equivalent quantity and
quality of public open space…”
So that means that both the quantity and the quality must be equivalent or better. So there can be no ‘net loss’ to ‘other designated open space.’
This is reinforced in paragraph 6.10.1 of the July 2012 Development Management Plan (draft for public consultation), which refers to Policy 26, confirming that the Policy protects designated Open Space from any ‘net loss’ at all, but allows some ‘net loss’ to Amenity Green Space, subject to certain requirements, and we have already established that the churchyard is not Amenity Green Space:
“The policy protects ‘designated open space’ (including regional, metropolitan, district and local parks, allotments, churchyards and civic spaces) against any ‘net loss’, but allows for cases where development would involve some ‘net loss’ of ‘Amenity Green Space’ (generally shared spaces on housing estates) provided replacement open space is of better or equivalent quality.”
So it is clear that the committee made the decision that it did in the mistaken belief that the policy that applies to the ‘designated Other Open Space’ on the site is the policy for ‘Amenity Green Space.’
Tony Harms: the proposals maintain the right of way along the paved path, but block the continuity of the New River linear open spaces reducing the amount of Open Space in doing so. The trees up the middle of Petherton Road and the allotments are both on New River land. The existing church building is the only encroachment onto New River land in the area and it was built without planning permission. The planning department, however, say that it now has ‘deemed consent’. The original church, that the applicant attempts to use to justify the scale of the proposals, was to the west side of the river, not on it!
“Residents object to the size of the new block, which will be the tallest in the area so close to a main road..”.
Is it credible to argue for buildings to remain the same height as 19th century terraces whilst aiming to tackle London’s colossal housing shortage?
Also, why is the [not so]Green Party’s Mustafa Korel still making the case for low-rise urban sprawl which the European Environment Agency deems “the worst-case scenario”?