‘The voice of good design and conservation needs to be heard’

“I’m always being criticised by the trustees because the planning group does a lot of work, but we don’t really publicise it,” says Hackney Society volunteer Lisa Shell.

“Janet, who’s the chair of the Society, is always saying, ‘But how does anyone know?’ And we say, ‘Who? Who?’ We’re just sort of busy doing our own thing.”

Busy they certainly are.

Shell, an architect who lives in Dalston, chairs the planning group of the Hackney Society, an organisation founded in 1967 that encourages thoughtful building design and the protection of the borough’s rich heritage.

The core of the group is around 12 people, all of them volunteers and the majority architects.

Each week, four or five of them pore over all the planning applications sent into the council, picking out projects that catch their eye or where they feel they can make a valuable contribution.

It is a mammoth task, with submissions often made up of pages and pages of drawings and documents.

The group maintains an email list of roughly 30 local residents – architects, conservation officers, interior designers, developers and more – who they can lean on for help. If someone has spare time or spots something that chimes with their specialisation, they can get involved.

But managing the list is a challenge, Shell explains, with people often moving away or falling off, so volunteers are always welcome.

Running the group was even harder in days gone by.

Before Hackney’s online planning portal made sifting through applications a little easier, the team, then much smaller in number, would have to do it by hand.

“In those days, until quite recently actually, we had to work from paper copies of drawings,” says Shell. “It was a huge administerial challenge, particularly with large projects, and Hackney Council used to print all the applications for us.”

Shell, having first joined the Society in 2009, decided to drop out in 2011.

“I said, ‘If I’m going to do this properly, I need a qualification’, a bit of authority. So I went off and studied building conservation.”

She rejoined the Society around three years later, when it was being chaired by Nick Perry.

Perry, an IT manager by trade, sadly passed away suddenly in October last year, by which time he, Shell and others had spent close to a decade building the planning group into what it is today.

“When I rejoined, Nick said to me, ‘Will you share the group with me?'” Shell explains. “Well, it meant that he still did most of the hard work. He got it into incredibly good shape in terms of how we manage information, which left me with less to do. He was absolutely brilliant.

“Since he died, I’ve sort of been maintaining it, you know, but it’s been a bit of a challenge and we’re trying to get things back into some sort of shape because I just don’t have the skills and resources, really.”

Between wrangling volunteers and keeping up with the admin, Shell and the group have pulled off a number of under-the-radar successes – the kind that the Society’s trustees have encouraged her to shout about.

“The recent one, just before Nick died actually, he had put a lot of work into responding to some planning guidance in relation to the Ash Grove bus depot.

“It’s quite an extraordinary building and he tried to get it listed. That failed. But Hackney Council were preparing a document to basically give guidance to potential developers that would involve demolition.

“There’s also an element of the wider site called Firmback Works, which was under council ownership. This building was originally a Regency house, a grand house, so it has really interesting origins.

“It’s been totally messed about with, but it’s fundamentally got some interest.

“Whilst the planning document was being prepared and consulted upon, including with our planning group, there was a demolition notice put up for Firmbank Works.

“They were about to move ahead and demolish it, even though the planning guidance hadn’t been concluded.

“Nick, who was good on policy stuff, managed to get that demolition notice lifted because technically that was the wrong thing for the council to do.”

‘They just plow on, and planners are playing catch-up’

Shell says part of the problem is a property team within the council that she claims works “totally independently from the planning department”.

“They just plow on with stuff, and then the planning department is playing catch-up, with loads of people jumping up and down about what’s happening.”

Thanks in large part to the volunteers, the building is still standing – a year after it was set to be bulldozed.

The team is also fighting plans to retrofit cladding on some council properties, which they fear will lead to the spread of internal mould.

Shell explains: “There’s a huge push to retrofit housing and Hackney Council have a fund and a duty to do so in order that homes can be heated with air source heat pumps for low carbon [emissions].

“But to be able to heat houses without burning fossil fuels, they have to be well insulated and well sealed.

“Hackney owns a huge amount of leaky, cold Victorian houses, and those houses sort of work because they’re leaky – in as much as they don’t get mouldy because there’s air blowing around them.

“Of course they now cost a huge amount to heat as energy gets more and more expensive, and they destroy the planet in doing so.

“That obviously needs dealing with, and so there’s this great push to externally insulate the solid brick and masonry of this Victorian housing – the shorthand for that is EWI, or external wall insulation.”

‘We rock the boat when we think it’s really important’

By searching for ‘EWI’ on the council’s portal, Shell found 39 applications submitted by the council – all from the same consultant.

“There’s no issue with that consultant – they’ve been asked to do this – but all the applications are completely lacking in detail and there’s a huge risk that this work will be undertaken badly and actually cause terrible condensation and mould problems.”

Shell believes it would be “disastrous”.

“We don’t want them to be given planning permission and simply roll out a load of crap. So actually I objected to all the applications, which means they’ll need to go to the planning committee.

“We’re then able to put our concerns to councillors rather than it remaining an internal council matter.”

She says the relationship with the Town Hall is “very complex” but has “always been good”.

“We rock the boat when we do occasionally force something to go to the planning committee. If no-one’s objected other than us and it tips it to a committee hearing, that’s a pain for the council and we understand that. But we’ll do it if we think it’s really important.”

She reveals that council officers themselves will sometimes even encourage the subgroup to get an application heard by the committee if they’re worried about certain aspects.

She has also been told that the Town Hall “appreciates our conservation input”.

And just how much influence does the group have over planning decisions?

“It’s really hard to say,” Shell says. “But my feeling is that if we don’t say anything, if we don’t give our opinion, if we don’t chip away, then we can’t make any difference.

“I think local people really appreciate it, that there’s more than just lone voices.

“We’re quite severe about some applications once they’ve gone in for planning. Those applications might get approved and get built and they might be fine. And sure, there’s often lots of public benefit that might be coming through with these schemes, but the voice of good design and conservation still needs to be heard.”

Shell speaks fondly of Perry too, and his legacy in Hackney, having worked so closely with him up until his death.

“He was involved with a little group called Nerd Nights,” she says. “He would describe himself as a nerd and he would become incredibly obsessed about things, often of a technical nature.

“He went to glass-making club and became really, really good at glass art. He has amazing pieces in his home.

“He would fully engross himself in things. He was obsessed with trains and London transportation. It was bikes for a bit, as well as a few other niche hobbies.

“And that sort of translated into the Hackney Society, because one of his longer-term obsessions was planning, and how it worked. Because it is all quite interesting, both structurally and socially, but it is very complex too.”

Perry served as chair of the Hackney Society for a long time, and Janet Chapman, a retired teacher and founder of the Hackney History Festival, had the unenviable task of filling his shoes.

Shell says it’s “absolutely brilliant” that Chapman agreed to take on the role.

“You know, there were things that Nick just wasn’t interested in. He wasn’t particularly interested in membership, in funding, and also getting the website redone – he had a block about that and I can’t quite remember what it was about, but it wasn’t going to get done.

“And now it’s already done. It still needs some work but it’s looking so much better. That’s Janet just making it happen. She makes things happen.

“She’s so full of energy, and she’s used to voluntary organisations and how they work. She rallies people, so she hasn’t left me alone,” Shell jokes.

In the meantime, Shell and her ragtag group are plowing on.

“Every month I organise all the planning data in a spreadsheet system that Nick invented. He wrote a script for it. It’s amazing.

“He was so impressive with all that, and I could just look away so I didn’t really have a clue how it worked – I didn’t need to.

“But now I do, and I’ve got it working, and we’re keeping it going. We’re keeping going. He’d be quite proud, I think.”

If you’re interested in volunteering or becoming a member of the Hackney Society, head to hackneysociety.org.