Local landmark Clapton Tram Depot to be demolished for redevelopment
Clapton Tram Sheds demonstration outside Hackney Town Hall last year
An application to partially demolish Hackney’s historic Clapton Tram Depot was narrowly passed by one vote at a planning committee earlier this month (4 April).
Despite objections from a number of local campaign groups, the council accepted revised plans to develop largely residential buildings of up to seven storeys in its place.
A proposal to convert the tram depot into an arts centre would have preserved the original building’s structure, but the committee overturned this.
Cllr Ian Rathbone, who also chairs Clapton Arts Trust (CAT), said on behalf of Leabridge ward councillors: “The decision taken last night by the planning committee on the slimmest of majorities – one vote – shows how close the argument was to being won. We hope the developer will take this on board and be willing to work with the local community and the artists working in the depot to preserve it as a cultural hub.
“Objectors were given little time to raise important legal points, particularly on the need for a full survey for bats, job loss incompatible with the Council’s Core Strategy and the impending possible listing of the depot by English Heritage – all of which have been ignored.”
Planning documents show that although a listing application has been made to English Heritage by CAT, the Department of Media, Culture and Sport declined to add the depot to the statutory list in 2005, as it “did not possess any special architectural or historic interest (of national importance).”
The site was locally listed in October 2010, though this provides no statutory protection.
With regards to job losses, the planning committee concluded that the proposal offered a “re-provision of a good level of the employment floorspace currently at the site”.
It also stated: “The applicant has outlined measures and expressed a willingness to re-accommodate current occupiers where possible.”
The council added that the proposal was “likely to lead to an uplift in the level of employment at the site” based on a calculation that 55 people are currently employed.
Previous estimations have suggested the site employs up to 100 people if casual and part time work is also factored in.
But approval of the planning means campaigners are left with few options. Cllr Rathbone opined: “We will be pressing on with our attempts to buy or lease the tram depot as it is and seek its regeneration rather than destruction.”
Related:
Fate of Clapton Tram Sheds to be decided
Love local landmarks? Protect your favourite Hackney building
[…] published in the Hackney Citizen here on […]
How many other, apparently disconnected, decisions taken by Hackney Council relate to their long-term vision for the borough and the role of private developers in realising it?
GSOB,the council declare that they have a vision for the future but they seem to be the only ones privy to what this is.This visions been mentioned before,most notably in the nil sex policy and we all know how well that went down.It may be that our old friend secret squirrel can enlighten us.
Well Pat, Secret Squirrel gave the impression that the striptease pubs were simply the initial ‘soft’ targets in a wider campaign to drive the bars and clubs out of Shoreditch; perhaps s/he isn’t quite the Walter Mitty we all imagined after all…
GSOB,I agree with you that a lot of seemingly unrelated planning decisions have a ulterior motive.Its only later that it becomes clear that a certain decision etc was part of a bigger picture.By then its too late and the developers have had another killing.And i was at a meeting when it was first put forward that the closing of the strip clubs was the first move in closing the majority of the bars down in shoreditch.
The developers only do what they’re in business to do: make money from erecting new buildings on brownfield sites and refurbishing/redeveloping existing ones; Hackney and other local authorities, on the other hand, have a duty of service to local voters/council taxpayers. If the sell-off of public land and assets into the private sector is part of the council’s vision for the rejuvenation of the borough, then they should be completely transparent about it, as they should also be regarding planning decisions. Is a form of social engineering a large part of the bigger picture?
GSOB,In shoreditch more than any other part of the borough every building that the council can sell they have sold and then usually given planning permission for a new build regardless of any objections.A one storey nursery in pitfield street belonging to an estate was sold off,demolished and a seven storey block of flats erected fifteen feet from a thirteen storey block[Caliban Towers}.This was against all the local residents wishes.And the remark made in the article about how close the vote was makes everything seem ok.
Chinese democracy, innit! 😉
And one wonders just how many (or rather, few) councillors have been put in the picture re Hackney’s ‘vision’ of its future.
If only that vision was put into words.