You can scan E8's website QR code on this poster onto your phone to download a map to guide you around the venues and to view examples of the artists and makers exhibiting and their workWith pumpkin carving this weekend at Dalston's Eastern Curve Garden, don't miss out on following the Pumpkin Path all next week from 6pm until 9pm (weather permitting). It's magic with all the lanterns lit up and on display
Last August Hackney put the Colvestone Primary School site on the market through its property agents Strettons. The deadline for bids was noon on the 17th October. The Dalston Trust's bid is for a collaborative intergenerational creative hub open to all Hackney residents. It's called the Colvestone Co-Lab.
The Dalston community's bid was encouraged by our Mayor's announcement "we’re committed to keeping the communities.. informed and involved, starting by encouraging organisations to put forward proposals for Colvestone Primary School”. Hackney also added a cautionary note "Interested organisations will need to ensure any proposals are sustainable and financially viable."
The Colvestone Co-Lab will be a destination offering facilities for everybody: theatre, puppetry and performing arts, music and crafts studios, museums, exhibition and social spaces, creative businesses, a cafe and gardens. It all sounds too good to be true. But is it financially viable and sustainable? We've done the sums and we think it is!! Let's hope Hackney agrees.
A planning inspector has refused to allow slums of the future to be built in Ridley Road market. The seven cramped sub-standard studio flats would have been on the 2nd floor of the Shopping Village which is owned by the off-shore developer Guy Ziser's company Larochette Real Estate Inc and registered in the secretive British Virgin Islands tax haven.
The Shopping Village has been contested space ever since Larochette bought it, tried to evict the ground floor traders and applied to convert it into offices and luxury flats. The community applied successfully to have it declared an Asset of Community Value. Larochette then agreed to refurbish the building instead. The artists on the upper floors were evicted in 2022 to enable the refurbishment to take place. Mr Ziser applied to convert the empty artists spaces into residential studio flats, claiming he only needed prior approval from Council planners. Hackney refused the application, saying full planning permission was needed. The Planning Inspector, on appeal, disagreed with Hackney but he also refused the application for prior approval so Mr Ziser lost the appeal.
Larochette argued that the street noise would not disturb the residents because the windows would have secondary glazing. But the Inspector agreed with our comments and concluded "Comments raised on the proposal query how ventilation will be provided for the proposed single aspect flats. If residents were to open their windows to provide ventilation, this would significantly reduce the effectiveness of the proposed secondary glazing, with subsequent harm to the living conditions of residents due to noise both from the bar as well as from the adjacent market. Given the lack of alternative methods of ventilation, it is reasonable that residents of the proposal could expect to open their windows to access fresh air...I conclude that the impacts of noise from commercial premises would lead to significant harm to the living conditions of future resident....The proposal would not comply with the Framework which seeks to avoid noise giving rise to significant adverse impacts on quality of life and achieve a high standard of amenity for users of development."
Hackney argued that approval should be refused because the area suffers from extreme parking pressure and the new residents cars would compound the problem. The Inspector agreed with that too, concluding that allowing the studio flats would cause "unacceptable transport impacts" and that the site had excellent access to services and facilities by sustainable means of transport.
The Inspectors finding that Larochette only required prior approval from the planners, and not full planning permission, has wider implications. In its Dalston Plan Hackney has declared all the buildings on the north side of Ridley Road as development opportunities. Hackney planners will have limited grounds to refuse prior approval applications for their conversion into flats and this could compromise development standards.
Hackney's Local Plan 2033 shows all the buildings along the north side of Ridley Road as development opportunity sites
Note: The reason the Planning Inspector found that only prior approval would be required for residential conversion is that Hackney's 2021 Article 4 map failed to include the north side of Ridley Road as part of Dalston Town Centre where full planning permission would still be required. Other later maps outline the Town Centre and do include the north side of Ridley Road. Hackney will have to make a new Article 4 direction with a new map to correct the error.
This is Hackney's map attached to the Article 4 order. Unfortunately it failed to outline the Dalston Town Centre area in red to include the north side of Ridley Road
Last January a community bid was made to Hackney, on behalf of a number of charitable and creative enterprises, to re-open the former Colvestone Primary School for public benefit - the aim is to continue the educational, cultural and social heritage which the school buildings embody. Hackney neither accepted nor rejected, or even discussed, that proposal but has now instructed estate agents Strettons to invite bids for the school site on the open market
Hackney has released a press statement in which the Mayor of Hackney said “We cannot let these buildings sit empty or simply offload them to the highest bidder, but have a duty to ensure they remain important public assets that benefit our communities." At the same time Strettons launched its marketing campaign describing the site as having a number of possible commercial uses including for private education.
Hackney's press release also states "organisations will need to ensure any proposals are sustainable and financially viable". However it seems unlikely that a community enterprise seeking to maximise public benefit will be financially viable if it is also expected to pay Hackney the full market rent for the site which would offered by competing commercial bidders.
After years of discussion with planners an application to demolish and re-develop the Matalan store and car park, at the rear of Kingsland Shopping Centre, has finally been made on behalf of the owners, Criterion. The plan is for three blocks of up to 14 storeys, and one up to 12 storeys, comprising 254 flats and a mix of commercial uses and workshops on the ground and first floors. All will be crammed onto the site which is just over 9,000 square metres. Development of the remaining front part of the Kingsland Shopping Centre is presently inhibited by Crossrail2 land safeguarding and Sainsbury's long lease. It is a 'car free' development but with some vehicle spaces reserved for disabled residents and commercial uses.
You can view the application and make comments here or alternatively email planning@hackney.gov.uk putting in the subject line Ref: 2025/0167 Matalan Plc, Dalston Cross Shopping Centre E8 2LX
The planned Matalan development showing three towers set back and spread across the site's northern boundary with gaps between them. The fourth tower is opposite Springfield House on the Eastern Curve in the foreground.
Of the 254 flats, 173 will be for sale at market prices and the remainder will be "affordable" of which 36 will be "intermediate" (for shared ownership) and 45 for "low cost rent" (London affordable rent). The affordable ones amount to 35% of all habitable rooms but do not meet the official planning policy target of 50% affordable homes. 84% of the flats would be 1-bed and 2-beds and, although the planning policy target for three beds or more is 33%, only 16% would be family size flats.
Although affordable and family size homes are the greatest local needs, the owner claims in its Financially Viable Appraisal that it cannot afford to meet those targets after taking into account its right to a financial incentive as landowner for "bringing forward the development" (£2.2million) plus 20% developers profit (£25.1million) on the scheme which has a finished development value of about £155million.
Due to the curtain of existing tall buildings extending across the southern boundary of the Matalan site, and the planned development's own density, 24% of the new flats will fail to meet the British Research Establishment's ( BRE) Sunlight Exposure standard. The development will also cause some 200 "major", and numerous lesser, sunlight losses/transgressions affecting residents flats in the existing surrounding buildings. The owner argues it can't be blamed for the number of flats which will be deficient in natural light saying its site has already been blighted by the existing tall buildings which have taken an "unfair share" of the sunlight previously available. ( You can read about how that happened here. Ed)
Matalan development looking north from the Eastern Curve
The owner argues that these sunlight deficits are acceptable for a dense inner city site like Dalston and claims that the gloomy flats overlooking the enclosed north facing 'square' at Dalston Works, Martel Place, where sunlight rarely touches the ground, provide "an understanding of the local character of an area" and a "useful proxy for acceptable daylight standards in a given location".
Matalan development looking east from the Colvestone Crescent/Ridley Road junction
The towers will loom over Ridley Road street market but the owner says of the market shoppers "Their susceptibility is judged to be Low. Their sensitivity is therefore Low." (ie They wont really notice or care. Ed.) The owner has also undertaken a number of tests of the potential overshadowing of the Ridley Road street market and concluded that it will receive 240 minutes of sunlight across "much of its area" and that it will "comfortably meet the BRE Guidelines". Whilst this sounds reassuring, the BRE Guidelines set a very low minimum requirement for open spaces, namely an annual average of only 2 hours direct sunlight daily over 50% of their area. The developer provides no detail of the sunlight which will be lost to the street market or of the areas where it will be retained.
The developer's illustration of the equinox sunpath, which represents the average level of annual sunlight obstruction, concludes that "although there will inevitably be some overshadowing of the market...a significant amount of direct sunlight will continue to reach the market space around the equinox and summer solstice".
As for landscaping on the Matalan site, the owner has adopted Hackney's request for greater "east/west pedestrian permeability", but unfortunately there will be no direct route out west to get to Kingsland Station when the shopping mall closes from10pm < 8am (from 5pm < 11am on Sundays) -so residents will have to walk a long way around to get there. Designs also adopt a "streets and yards" approach and it is claimed that the open spaces will have "verdant" gardens and "nature trails". However about 75% of all of the "green" spaces and children's playgrounds will be on a residents-only 2nd floor raised concrete podium and others on 7th to 12th storey rooftops.
The developer acknowledges that, at ground level, the public spaces as a whole fail to meet even the BRE minimum guideline for sunlight on open spaces - ie less than half the area will receive 2 hours direct sunlight daily on average annually. These levels of sunlight are wholly inadequate for the planned green spaces, meeting places and children's playgrounds which are essential to a large residential development expected to have some 450 residents and 100 children.
Criterion critcises Hackney Council for its year on year failures to meet its official annual targets for new homes - between 2019 and 2023 it says Hackney should have built 5,320 homes but only built 3,519. It points out that its proposed development of 254 new flats would contribute significantly to meeting the current shortage of homes. Hackney's recently approved the Dalston Supplementary Planning Document which recognises Matalan as a development opportunity site for taller buildings - in fact the final version was drafted by Hackney planners in the context of their design discussions with Matalan's owner. Criterion's scheme is likely to be recommended for approval subject to any further improvements which can be negotiated.
You can view the application and make comments here or alternatively email planning@hackney.gov.uk and put in the subject line Ref: 2025/0167 Matalan Plc, Dalston Cross Shopping Centre
PS If there are any sustainable energy, whole life-cycle carbon, circular economy or fire/flood risk experts out there, please have a look at the owner's consultant's reports. We will publish here all informative and helpful comments made.
