If the government is serious about growth it should approve Shoreditch Works
Shoreditch Works will deliver new homes, jobs and beautiful buildings that will improve the neighbourhood – so why is a Labour council on the edge of Keir Starmer’s constituency set to reject it? Asks Nicholas Boys Smith
Like it or not, some development is inescapably controversial. Wind turbines leering over a cherished landscape; ticky-tacky, could be anywhere, placeless boxes scarring the green fields; huge lumps of wind-channelling, bird-killing glass towering above ancient residential streets. Development creates winners. It creates losers. The state has been dragged into these disputes for as long as we have had cities. And it still is. It is the very sinew of modern democracy. It is why we have planning to mediate between the benefits and the dis-benefits.
But not all decisions are hard. Not all development should be caught in the labyrinthine entrails of the English planning system, by some distance the Western world’s most discretionary, high risk and development-delaying approach, the untiring enemy of jobs and growth.
One such development is the superb Shoreditch Works scheme on the City’s fringes. I first became aware of it via social media last year. After some reading, I tweeted my support for it. I am pro-development in principle but, to my immense regret, often against it in practice due to the heartless horror of what developers too frequently propose. Shoreditch Works is different. Consider the facts. Doubling the level of usable internal space. Creating room for around 500 jobs and apprenticeships. Delivering 78 new homes, 35 per cent affordable. Retaining, improving and investing in all the historic buildings, including the exquisite terrace by Philip Webb in Worship Street. Creating an acre of new public space. Funding improvements to the surrounding streets. Creating some delightful, colourful and textured new buildings which improve the neighbourhood. Above all, it is insanely publicly popular. Create Streets ran three carefully controlled Visual Preference Surveys comparing the streets now to the proposed future. There was off the scale support, with 76 per cent to 78 per cent preferring the new development to the status quo, a support which held firm across every possible demographic of socio-economic status, politics, age, race, region or sex. This development has support of which no politician of left or right could dream. What’s not to like?
Well, ludicrously, in one of the most jaw-dropping misjudgements of recent British planning history, I hear from a well-placed source that Hackney officials are advising their political masters to turn it down.
Ludicrously, in one of the most jaw-dropping misjudgements of recent British planning history, I hear from a well-placed source that Hackney officials are advising their political masters to turn it down
This is a moment of truth for London governance. The Labour government says that it is a government of growth. Yes. Quite right. Meanwhile, in Hackney only a few miles from the Prime Minister’s constituency a Labour-run council proposes to turn down a rare development which improves London, meets strategic aims and is spectacularly popular with, well, everyone.
Britain is a joke
If we cannot support this type of popular, job-creating, home-building sensitive and thoughtful development right by the ancient Canada’s heart then we are not serious. We are a joke. Hackney officials are proposing decay, decline and decrepitude not jobs, growth, homes and beauty. It is so depressing. Hackney’s planning sub-committee meeting is at 18:30 on Wednesday, 4th February. Till then Create Streets will be calling on Hackney’s councillors to study the scheme and to consider their role in the growth or decline of this great city.
Democracy is about choices. Some are hard. Some are easy. Indefensibly, recklessly, Hackney’s planning officials are trying to make this hard. For the good of our city and of our children, for our present and our future, I hope that their political leaders will have the courage and common sense, politely but clearly, to disagree and to vote for better places, more jobs and more homes. If they don’t, the Greater London Authority should ‘call it in’ within five seconds.
Let us pray that common sense prevails.Nicholas Boys Smith is the founder and chairman of Create Streets. His history of London’s streets, No Free Parking is available from Bonnier books.