Chatsworth public toilets spared as Greens reverse Labour plan

Hackney Council has changed course on plans to sell off derelict public toilets in a win for community campaigners.

On Monday (20 July) the new Green administration officially cancelled Labour’s plans to dispose of the vacant council-owned sites on Brooksby’s Walk overlooking Chatsworth Road, which have stood largely disused for years.

The Clapton Improvement Society (CIS), a community group set up to revitalise vacant properties in the area, argued that the boarded-up building was “readily able to restore for public use and benefit”.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) at a protest outside the Town Hall on Monday, the group’s spokesperson Jon Aldenton denounced the sale as “complete madness”.

“It’s crazy economics because if you sell off assets to meet a revenue budget, you never get them back,” he said. Opponents of the sale added that the eastern part of the borough only has 11 public toilets, unfairly impacting wheelchair users or those with mobility problems.

The group claims they have “a watertight plan to create an environmentally-friendly, community-led initiative to generate income for the public and the council at zero cost to the community,” though the finer points of this plan have not been disclosed.

A history of false starts

The row is the latest chapter in a saga stretching back more than a decade. The 1930s-era toilets stood empty for close to two decades before the Clapton Improvement Society cleaned up and reopened them in 2011, serving locals and shoppers at the Sunday Chatsworth Road market.

In April 2012 the society won planning permission to convert the building into an events cafe with a rooftop terrace, solar panels, an art gallery and an evening cocktail and wine bar, with a staffed unisex toilet financed by the commercial operation.

Those plans were thrown into doubt weeks later when Homerton Hospital emerged as a rival bidder, hoping to buy the site to build a walk-in sickle cell day care unit and a renal dialysis facility.

The hospital, which then managed around 800 sickle cell patients, said it would look to re-provide public toilets as part of the scheme. Neither proposal came to fruition.

The building later played host to a community cafe, ‘Nana’, until 2015, when it was forced to shut. The loos subsequently became home to a rooftop restaurant, Brooksby’s Walk, but by 2018 its doors had also closed.

Throughout, campaigners have argued that the site is the only publicly owned plot on Chatsworth Road and the only feasible spot for public toilets on a high street made busier by the Sunday market – a point pressed as far back as 2012 by the Chatsworth Road Traders and Residents Association, which warned that losing the facilities would make “no sense” as the market grew.

In December 2025, the Labour-run council signed off on plans to sell the site, due to the costly investment required to restore the building and its need to generate revenue. But after the party’s defeat at the May elections, the CIS revived its campaign to keep the toilets in public use.

‘Strength of feeling’

At a cabinet meeting on Monday evening, senior councillors accepted the campaigners’ demands – citing both the “strength of feeling” and the Green party’s election manifesto pledge to bring more council-owned buildings into public use.

Cllr Rachel Nkiessu-Guifo, cabinet member for inclusive economy, skills, high streets and markets, confirmed the council would trigger a “fair and time-limited” process to consider “credible” community-led alternatives.

“Any solution must respond to the very real financial pressures the council faces,” she added.

The decision comes as the new administration confirmed the borough continues to face a “real financial crisis”. At Monday’s meeting, cabinet member for finance, Cllr Florence Schechter put the council’s current forecasted overspend at £5.4m.