Campaigners to oppose latest effort to turn historic Victoria Park pub into ‘luxury home’
The Albion, pictured in 2008. Photograph: Dr Neil Clifton / Geograph
Campaigners have vowed to oppose new plans to convert a historic pub in Victoria Park into a private home – just a year after similar proposals were blocked.
An attempt to turn the 400-year-old Albion on Lauriston Road into a three-bedroom house was vetoed by the council in 2024 after it received 31 objections.
One of those objections came from the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), whose local protection officer James Watson welcomed the Town Hall’s decision.
He said at the time: “We now call on the developer to properly market the site at a fair price, or secure a pub tenant to relaunch the Albion at the heart of the community.”
But the developer is trying once again to convert the pub into a house.
An application lodged last month seeks full planning permission for a “change of use of public house to a self-contained dwelling”.
It includes a viability report from surveyor Andrew Crease, who concludes that he “cannot see any scenario in which it would be purchased by a public house operator”.
He argues that if the property were to remain a pub, “extensive changes would be required to the rear yard and in providing a commercial kitchen”.
Crease states: “This is not a case of restoring a viable business, it is one of starting from scratch.”
Estate agency Stirling Ackroyd also weigh in with a marketing report.
They write that “despite an extensive, dedicated and aggressive marketing campaign”, they have been “unable to attract a buyer for the Albion to operate the property as a public house”.
But Watson said CAMRA, along with the Campaign for Pubs, will “oppose this attempt to turn a historic pub into a luxury home”.
He told the Citizen: “It is a classic case of developer land banking and waiting for opposition to melt away.
“Hackney has lost over two thirds of its pubs over the last 30 years and we need to fight for what is left.
“The Albion is a beautiful building that has been deliberately neglected.
“There’s plenty of interest in restoring it as a community pub.”
Within walking distance of The Albion to the east are the remains of the Penshurst and the Bedford, to the west the remains of the Clarendon, The Northumberland and the Frampton and to the north the irony of Bernie Grant House being built of the site of The Two Black Boys (latterly The 39 Steps) They all fell by the wayside this century and by then none was a prime example. But it is an indication of how The Local has vanished from our cities.
It’s absolutely outrageous that OUR public houses are treated so casually by our politicians and civil society representatives. What’s happening to pubs all over the country simply for the sake of grotesque insatiable private greed.
The Pubs Crisis is existential and it’s harming society indelibly. Permanently.
There is no excuse but GREED it’s disgraceful and disgustingly shameless