Cyndi Himmelstiere Attends the Public Consultation, Reads the 300-Page Document, and Reports Back From the Room Where These Decisions Are Made
Reported by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
By Cyndi Himmelstiere | Shoreditch Dispatches
The planning consultation for the mixed-use development proposed for the site of the former industrial building at the corner of Holywell Lane and Curtain Road was held last Thursday at 6pm in the community room above the library, which held approximately 40 people at its rated capacity and contained approximately 60 on the night, standing in the gaps between the chairs and along the walls, which the planning officer leading the session noted was “great to see such community engagement” and which the people standing against the wall for two hours noted was a design failure.
I went because I live three streets from the proposed site and because the 300-page planning application document, which I read in stages over the preceding week, contains information that is consequential for my neighbourhood and that would not reach me through any other channel. Hackney Council’s planning portal lists applications and their documents. The applications are public. The documents are large, written in planning language that is technically accessible to any literate adult and practically accessible to people who have previously encountered planning language and know where in the 300 pages to look for the things that matter.
What the Proposal Is
The proposal is for a twelve-storey building on a site that currently has a two-storey former warehouse. The building will contain: 87 residential units (34 percent affordable, which in London planning means affordable relative to local market rents, which is still unaffordable to many people who need affordable housing in East London); commercial space on the ground floor specified for “active uses” that the application does not further define; and a publicly accessible courtyard that the plans show as a lovely green space and that the local residents in the consultation room noted is positioned such that it will receive direct sunlight for approximately two hours per day given the shadow cast by the building itself, which is a detail that took a retired architect in the third row to identify and that the planning officer thanked her for raising while writing it on the whiteboard in the manner of a person who was aware of the issue and was now on record as being aware of it.
The Affordable Housing Question
Thirty-four percent affordable is below the 35 percent threshold that Hackney’s local plan sets as the expectation for development of this type. The applicant has submitted a viability assessment demonstrating that the economics of the development do not support 35 percent, which is the standard route by which developments in London fall below the affordable housing requirement — a viability assessment that is produced by the developer’s consultant, reviewed by the council’s consultant, and that in most cases produces a number close to what the developer proposed, because the assessment methodology gives both parties sufficient flexibility to converge on a compromise that permits the development while providing the council with a defensible paper record of having sought more affordable housing than it is getting.
The community in the room wanted more affordable units. The developer’s representative said the economics precluded more. The planning officer said the council would review the viability assessment. This is how planning in London proceeds: the outcome is within the range that the viability methodology produces, the community input is recorded, the decision is made by the planning committee, and the building is built. The courtyard will have two hours of direct sunlight. The affordable housing will be 34 percent. The street I live on will have a twelve-storey building where a warehouse was. I’ll update this as the process proceeds.
For planning processes that require reading 300 pages, see The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
