OPEN Dalston

Developer to make £millions. What price Dalston?

2012-01-28T11:41:00.027Z

OPEN Dalston has seen evidence that the developer of the proposed "Dalston Green" 18-storey towerblock is set to make over £10,000,000 if the scheme gets planning permission and is then built and sold.

Dalston Green tower - the shadows cover Bradbury St. and reach Gillett Square by early afternoon

The 'dressed in green' scheme, over 50 metres tall, will be stacked with 130 private flats. All for sale - with just 17 at "affordable" prices. The developer expects to make £10,900,00 profit which is a 29% return on the £37,500,000 development cost. He says that yield is a "lower level of profit than the accepted norm" and so he shouldn't have to provide any more affordable housing. (29% return?! I only get 1.5% on my RBS investment account! - Ed).

The developer admits that about 30% of the flats don't meet the GLA minimum space standard but he still expects to sell 1-bed flats for up to £450,000; 2-bed flats for up to £525,000 and 3-bed flats for up to £580,00 (depending upon floor levels, balconies etc). If you want one of the penthouse flats (below the roof garden) it could cost you around £1,000,000. Total sales of £48,000,000 are expected.

Dressed in Green's frontage will dominate the High Street and diminish its neighbours

The scheme's massive presence will dominate Kingsland - overshadowing homes, businesses and locally listed buildings. Ridley Road market will lose its afternoon and evening sunlight.

Ridley Market runs east of the Dressed in Green tower. The shadows reach Ridley Market by 2pm and get longer as the afternoon turns to evening.

The developer has calculated to compensate Dalston for these losses - about £150,000 towards a makeover of Dalston Kingsland station's entrance and a £350,000 'planning gain' payment to Hackney Council if it grants permission. In all £500,000 or about 1% of the value of the whole development.

What some of the locals say (from EastLondonLines.co.uk)

You can see details of the application 2011/3439 on the Council's web site here.

Make your comments on line here
Public consultation officially closes on 30.1.12 but the Council should consider all comments received prior to the decision of the Planning Sub-Committee which is presently expected to be on 7.3.12.

New towerblock for Kingsland High Street

2012-01-21T19:42:00.035Z

A planning application has been made for an 18 storey tower stepping down to 6 storeys fronting Kingsland High Street next to Dalston Kingsland overground station. The tower backs onto Boleyn Road. The development is for 130 flats, a large ground floor shop (currently Peacocks) and the developer is to re-model the neighbouring station entrance to make it more accessible including lifts servicing the platforms.

You can see details of the application 2011/3439 on the Council's web site here. Public consultation officially closes on 30.1.12 but the Council should consider all comments received prior to the decision of the Planning Sub-Committee which is presently expected to be on 7.3.12. You can make your comments on line here.

Of the 130 flats planned, only 17 flats (13%) are to be "affordable" and the remainder (87% unaffordable) are for private sale. Policy guidelines are for 50% affordable housing. The affordable flats are all planned to be in the smaller block fronting Kingsland High Street but the developer is expected to argue that they too should be sold off to pay for the work to the station.

The number of flats on the site far exceeds the London Plan guidelines for appropriate density. The developer claims the flats are of 'exemplary design' although it admits that only 70% of the flats fully meet the London Plan's 'minimum space standards'. These factors indicate a planned over-development of the site.

The scale of the building will result in overshadowing of local residents' homes and gardens. There will be accelerated wind speeds locally so that some public areas around the building will be, the consultants have found, "unsuitable for standing" (sometimes, they say, "the criteria for safety of all pedestrians including sensitive pedestrians and cyclists is exceeded").

Although the building is dressed in green there is little explanation of who will maintain the planting, or undertake the urban agriculture proposed, or pay for it. No vegetation is sustainable on the bleak North Face of the tower (Imagine, for a moment, the building without any greenery. Ed.)

The 1902 neighbouring group - one of the finest surviving terraces on the high street which will be dominated by the development although the developer claims that the "impacts on townscape and heritage are minimal".

The proposed blocks will dominate the 3-4 storey Victorian high street. The site neighbours a terrace of finely detailed 1902 buildings including the Grade II listed property at 41 Kingsland High Street (currently Shanghai restaurant, formerly Cooke's Eels Pie and Mash). Other listed buildings affected include the Rio Cinema, Colvestone Primary School and locally listed buildings opposite at 74-76 Kingsland High Street.

The "Dressed in Green" tower is being promoted by the developer's PR company, Four Communications, which has recruited Hackney's Deputy Mayor Karen Alcock and Councillor Alan Laing (formerly a member of Barratt's PR firm Hard Hat). "We are keen to use Alan’s extensive network of contacts within London politics" "said Councillor Laing's new Managing Director whose company is also promoting the new Sainsburys planned for Stoke Newington and the controversial Stamford Hill school development.

Don't forget to have your say. Log in and make your comments to Hackney Planning Department here.

The Twelve days of Christmas

2011-12-24T18:40:00.046Z

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

... Twelve legends dining

This image, by OPEN's Brian Cumming, shows some of the stars of popular entertainment who were associated with the now demolished 1886 Dalston Circus and Theatre buildings. They include Sir Robert Fossett (1886 circus owner), Marie Lloyd (1870-1922 Hackney's very own international music hall star), Stevie Wonder (played there in 1963 with his American band), The Club Four Aces produced Desmond Dekker (in 1969 - with his first UK reggae hit 'The Israelites'), Bob Marley (ate curry goat there), The Prodigy (began their career at the Labyrinth) and then there was Sid and Nancy.

You can learn about the demolition of old Dalston by watching Winstan Whitter's short film "Save our Heritage" .

Hackney Council demolished the historic buildings in 2007 and sold the land (for a peppercorn) to help fund New Dalston's unaffordable private towerblock flats, brand name shops and a bus station on The Slab in Dalston The Slab turned out to cost £63 million but is only to be used by one bus - the 488 extended route from Clapton.

... Eleven pipers piping

This year Hackney Mayor Pipe's Cabinet approved the grant of a lease of the new Dalston Square Library's cafe to a local business selling Starbucks coffee. The Council's report bemoaned the failure of its extensive marketing to attract a national cafe chain store as a direct lessee but recommended that some Starbucks franchise branding was better than nothing.

The retail units in Dalston Square were originally planned and built to try and attract national chain stores. Nevertheless the Starbucks news provoked outrage amongst Dalston's twiterati. "Up and coming Dalston just became got up and left" said one. Dalston's twiterati champion local character and the numerous independent businesses opening in Dalston. If the Council pursues its love affair with brand stores could Dalston eventually become an identikit town centre, a non-place, which could be anywhere?

.......Ten Lords a leaping

(Click on image to enlarge)

OPEN's Patron is Lord Low of Dalston. A non-party, cross bench, peer who speaks for the greater common good. He is the President of the European Blind Union amongst his many accomplishments. This year the Low Commission, which Colin Low chaired, has recently achieved substantial reversals of the government's proposed cuts to welfare benefits for disabled people. For many thousands it will "make a difference between existing and a life worth living".

Lord Coe is chairman of the London Olympic Committee for which he is paid over £350,000 pa. He also acts as a global adviser to NIKE and reportedly receives another £100,000 pa from AMT-Sybex, a software company whose client, Thames Water, landed an exclusive deal for the 2012 Olympics shortly after Lord Coe joined them.

Lord Coe is said to have been "instrumental in all of the commercial deals for the Olympics". Oops! One of his companies which had assets of £2.375m last year has written them off and plunged £280K in the red this year. Still, he also collected some £7,000 for Committee attendances... every little helps.

.......Nine Ladies Dancing

Hundreds of local residents' jobs, and safe working conditions for women, were saved this year when the Council did a U-Turn on its planned borough wide policy of "Nil" tolerance towards striptease venues. The Licensing Committee planned to refuse licenses to 'sex entertainment' venues borough-wide which would have criminalised erotic entertainment - striptease, burlesque, gay cabaret - and banned shops selling products which "encourage sexual activity" . The policy targeted two striptease pubs owned by women in Shoreditch.

Local council estate Tenants' Associations, Hackney Trades Unions and the Reverend Paul Turp of Shoreditch Church, feared the return of underground illegal venues, exploitation of women and gangsterism. A successful community campaign, in which 75% of consultees in Shoreditch opposed the "Nil" policy, resulted in the Council making a policy exception and renewing the licenses in Shoreditch this year.

You can find out more about the campaign by watching this short film "Hands Off" in which dancers, costumiers, business owners, the Vicar of St Leonards Church and others all have their say.

Tower Hamlets is currently considering a borough wide "Nil" policy.

........Eight days a week

The Eastern Curve Garden has been so busy it fitted eight days of activities into each seven day week. And it's been so successful it has won the national Landscape Institute President's Award. There has been pumpkin carving, African Tango, lantern making, pizza baking, healthy herbs, grizzley gargoyles, harvest festival, giant crystal light orbs, big banquets, film making, art teaching, garden dens, summer days, brazilian nights, theatre shows, afternoon teas, fundraising, furniture making, terrific totems, story telling, real nappies, scary scarecrows, carnival arts and bar-b-ques.

And that's not even mentioning the gardening activities (see photo) and the next project to build a pineapple hot house (you can help by donating). The events list at Eastern Curve Garden is never ending. Lets hope it never ends. (Watch this space. Carefully! Ed.)

.......Seven years for looting

The courts sat day and night to deliver swift and severe punishments to rioters and looters. Some Hackney residents got long jail sentences, particularly the one who smashed up a police car.

Pauline Pearce was discovered when this internet film of her, the Hackney Heroine of Clarence Road calling for social solidarity, went viral with over two million hits. She was feted by the media and leading politicians. Later she was set up for a journalists' sting but she has bounced back. Some independent businesses fought off the looters but others were devastated by the riots until the local community rallied round and helped them back to their feet. Meanwhile the government delays paying out the riot compensation payments which are legally due.

The politicians said the rioting was 'pure criminality' - so nothing to do then with this or this or this or this or this

.......Six blackened buildings

In previous years they burned down old buildings on Dalston's development sites and last year they painted our surviving Georgian houses black - a somber reminder of the charred remains or a dark vision of more funeral pyres to come? Last year, after four fires, three demolitions and OPEN Dalston's long campaign, Hackney finally bought the terraces back from the off-shore slum landlord (For double what it had sold them to him for at the auction in 2002 - Ed).

Now, in the age of austerity when money is scarce, and despite the Council's proposed 'conservation led ' scheme, the buildings remain derelict and the two surviving businesses are at risk.

The Council proposes to sell the terraces off to a developer and has consulted on a re-development scheme where only the facades of the buildings will be retained.

.........Five Gold Rings

Gold Dust from Mike Wells on Vimeo.
This year saw the publication of banned Hackney author Iain Sinclair's latest book "Ghost Milk". His ban from speaking on Hackney Council premises has never been lifted but he was able to present his book at Dalston's Vortex jazz club.

Some of the book focuses on the profligate failures of grand Olympic projects and highlights the extensive radioactive contamination across the London Olympic 2012 park . The Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) was entrusted, as both planning authority and developer, to self-regulate the excavation, stockpiling, and burial of 7,000 tonnes of radioactive waste on the site - which it did without any prior planning permission at all!

Then there is the further environmental scandal of the 2012 Olympic's - its sponsorship by Dow Chemical, which purchased the corporate mass-poisoner Union Carbide, and which is now fighting claims for continuing fouled water and deformed babies in Bhopal, India .

What will the environmental legacy be for the future generations who will live on the 2012 site ? Consultants have advised that they shouldn't eat anything grown in their gardens.

.........Four Aces Club

OPEN Dalston member Winstan's Whitter's documentary Legacy in the dust tells the story of Dalston's legendary reggae club, its relationship with the Council and the police and how it went on to become the rave venue Labyrinth.

In 2007 the authorities demolished the club's original home in the historic Dalston Theatre buildings at 14 Dalston Lane. They crushed it, ground it up and used it in the foundations for Barratt's New Dalston tower block development of unaffordable flats.

Thus we lost our historic buildings in Dalston and the thirty year cultural legacy of our African-Carribean community. So now the authorities are calling the new tower blocks after the artists who performed in the club they demolished - Sledge Tower, Wonder House, Marley House etc. Patronising hypocrisy...or what?

Did anyone ask Stevie Wonder if he wanted a Dalston tower block named after him?

........Three French hens

The Worship of Mammon 1909 by Evelyn de Morgan - updated in the age of austerity

In the fourth year of the credit freeze, after the bubble burst and banks went bust, sustainable innovation continues in Dalston. There were three hens on the roof of FARM:Shop; Bootstrap roof's garden was harvested, eaten and then morphed into a cinema for Hackney Film Festival, its car park was transformed into a night market; Cafe Oto saw the return of the Arkestra; Arcola Theatre opened its circus tent; Kingsland Road shop windows are turning into art galleries; the perennial Vortex never fails to attract; Dalston is turning into Cupcake Alley with all the new coffee shops and Passing Clouds still grooves 'til the sun comes up.

........Two subsidies

Barratt's Dalston Square. Phase 1 on the left. Phase 2, on the Slab above the station, on the right.

This year Barratt, who are building the Dalston Square towers, succeeded where Oliver Twist failed. It got second helpings of the tasty tax- payers subsidy which it first had earlier in the year.With house builders struggling, and banks asking for 25% deposits on new build properties, the government has set aside a further £400 million to lend first time buyers towards their deposits on Barratt's and other flats. The deal initially seems attractive to borrowers (until they have to pay it back). Barratt loves it - it helps keep prices, and profit margins, high. With insufficient homes, and rents soaring, buy-to-let landlords think they have found a safe haven and taken 60% of the East London new build market.

Barratt have also been pulling strings to support the recently announced "simplification" of planning rules - the "presumption in favour of development". Hello to the Big Business Society. Goodbye bio-diversity and local character and, if you can't pay the rent or the bank, then its goodbye to you too.

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me
...a retail opportunity

This year the Council approved an amended Dalston Area Action Plan.Two years ago OPEN Dalston consulted the local community and responded to Hackney's proposals for a massive residential/retail led 8-storey redevelopment of Dalston Cross shopping centre. The new DAAP is now proposing "creating the conditions for national high street stores to be attracted to the area", building two 15-story towers to dominate Kingsland Road and developing extensive "shopping circuits" which include turning the community's Eastern Curve Garden into a "green shopping mall".(Are they mad? -Ed)

Who is persuading the Council of the benefits of such schemes ? It turns out that the "Dressed in Green" tower (see photo) is being promoted by the PR company, Four Communications, which has recruited Hackney's Deputy Mayor Karen Alcock and Councillor Alan Laing (formerly a member of Barratt's PR firm Hard Hat)

"We are keen to use Alan’s extensive network of contacts within London politics" said Councillor Laing's new Managing Director whose company is also promoting the new Sainsburys planned for Stoke Newington and the controversial Stamford Hill school development

"....Towers for people who need gifts and coffee Only available from brandname shops...."
From "Regeneration Blues" by Michael Rosen

".... The latest blocks, blindly monolithic, devour pavements and abolish bus stops. They aspire to an occult geometry of capital: Queensbridge Quarter, Dalston Square. Everything is contained, separate, protected from flow and drift. No junk mail, please. No doorstep hawkers. No doorsteps. The big idea is to build in-station car parks, to control ‘pedestrian permeability’, so that clients of the transport system exit directly into a shopping mall. Where possible, a supermarket operator underwrites the whole development, erecting towers on site, so that Hackney becomes a suburb of Tesco, with streets, permanently under cosmetic revision, replaced by 24-hour aisles. Light and weather you can control. Behaviour is monitored by a discreet surveillance technology."
Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books, June 2009

Michael Rosen and Olusola Oyeleye to perform poetry with jazz at Arcola Theatre on Sunday 11 December

2011-12-08T10:13:00.005Z

The multi-talented award winning writer and theatre director Olusola Oyeleye is to star as the guest artist at Arcola Theatre's "Notes & Quotes" series this Sunday evening in Dalston.

Michael Rosen, the poet, playwright and former Children's Laureate, is also to headline at the event. Michael worked recently with the filmmaker Emma-Louise Williams to produce a film about Hackney "Under the Cranes" which has received widespread acclaim.

The evening will also feature music from the Dalston based jazz quintet The Dulce Tones and there will be improvised collaborations between the musicians and poets. The Dulce Tones will feature the trumpet and flugelhorn playing of Loz Speyer who's band Time Zone's recent Cuban influenced album "Crossing the line" has attracted critical acclaim.

The event, "Notes and Quotes", is the second in a series of poetry and jazz events and will take place at 7pm on Sunday 11 December in Arcola Theatre, Ashwin Street, Dalston E8. Tickets are available in advance and on the door.

Arcola Box Office: 020 7503 1646 and www.arcolatheatre.com

Starbucks? Dalston's twitterarti get in a flap.

2011-10-25T20:23:00.025+01:00

Dalston's twittering classes have gone ballistic since we posted news about a Starbucks franchise opening in Hackney Council's new Dalston Square library. We have had more hits on the OPEN Dalston blog than in any other week. Why so?

Fans of the freshly roasted bean say Starbucks' coffee is rubbish, others fear for the survival of those doughty entrepreneurs who have opened independent cafes in Dalston in recent years, others announce the arrival of gentrification and that Dalston will never be the same again, "cue funeral march " etc. One tweet asks "isn't there anything we can do to stop it?". Well yes, there is a chance to influence Dalston's future. Read on.

Last week we alerted people to the deadline for commenting on the Council's Dalston Masterplan (the DAAP) . Comments will be considered by a government Planning Inspector in due course. The Masterplan acknowledges that "the wealth of small-scale independent retailers is considered intrinsic to the community’s sense of identity" but there is a need for "balance", says the Council, by "creating the conditions for national high street stores to be attracted to the area".

Do you object to the proposed "retail led regeneration" of Dalston? Do you object to Dalston becoming a "shopping destination" for brand name shops. Will people spending money in those shops boost our local economy? Could Dalston become another non-place? Do you think there should be more intense, and high-rise, developments to help pay for the new "shopping circuits" which the Council proposes?

If you are concerned to protect Dalston's local character and identity you can, by 3rd November, send your comments on the Masterplan to the Council . Even if Hackney don't pay any attention to your views at least the Government Inspector will.

Hackney secure Starbucks branding for Dalston Square Library

2011-10-17T10:24:00.050+01:00

After a long search, to try and attract a national coffee shop chain, Hackney have finally secured the offer of a Starbucks franchise to operate out of the new Dalston Square Library. A report to Hackney's Cabinet recommends acceptance because it " will assist in providing a sense of place for the new Dalston Town Square... and will be beneficial for local economic development."

Hackney's move follows conventional political thinking. Former Labour Minster, Margaret Hodge, was impressed by the ideas of Starbucks' UK MD Darcy Willson-Rymer, who argued that the best way to save libraries is to put coffee shops in them, as Starbucks have all over the US. Hodge cited the head of Norwich libraries as a success story. "She has reversed the national footfall trend. She said that if she's ever stuck for an idea on how to run libraries, she visits Tesco." Hackney's decision does not go as far as some, like Croydon, which considered wholesale privatisation of libraries by their sale to Starbuck's USA partners LSSI.

Looking north from Dalston Square

Hackney say that the café operator will be permitted to locate tables, chairs and umbrellas within part of the public square outside the front of the café space. Unfortunately, as Hackney's Environmental Consultants advised before Dalston Square was built, the limited sunlight and high wind speeds (the canyon effect) created by the new towerblocks will not make Dalston Square generally suitable for sitting out. Still, it'll be the place to go if you want the froth blown off your capuccino and, furthermore, Hackney is one step closer to achieving its vision.

"....Towers for people who need gifts and coffee Only available from brandname shops...."
From "Regeneration Blues" by Michael Rosen

The Council's plan for Dalston

2011-10-04T20:38:00.097+01:00

The Council has published its new Dalston Area Action Plan (DAAP). You can read it here. From now until Thursday 3 November (4pm) you can make representations to the Council on the amended DAAP. In due course your representations will be considered by a government Planning Inspector before the DAAP is formally approved. Make a difference. Speak up - don't miss the deadline!

In May 2009 OPEN Dalston organised an exhibition and public consultation in response to the Council's proposed Masterplan for Dalston. We incorporated the views expressed by local people in our submission to the Council. The Council says it listened to the community when amending its plan.

The DAAP is a lengthy (132 pages) document, lavishly illustrated with maps, charts and well worn visionary phrases which sit uncomfortably with Dalston's recent history - retaining Dalston’s unique character and heritage is a key goal; supporting community and creative infrastructure ; provision of affordable housing and workspaces; re-use of heritage buildings; nurturing Dalston's cultural, creative and community hub ; improvements to Ridley Road Market and adjacent small-scale shops....

An artists impression of a new high street entrance to Ridley Road market

The DAAP also states that the Council's own resources and land ownership is insufficient to implement the changes it wants to make to our public spaces and so these are dependant upon the financial contributions which private landowners are required to make when they are granted planning permission for development (Section 106 money). Development of 'opportunity sites' is therefore encouraged by the DAAP. Two Dalston sites are identified for major development with tall buildings.

Dressed in green, a proposed new 17-storey block at 51-57 Kingsland High Street (Peacocks store) next to the overground station. If planning permission is granted the developer will be asked to invest in re-modelling the station. The scheme is being promoted by a PR company which employs Hackney's Deputy Mayor Karen Alcock and Councillor Alan Laing."We are keen to use Alan’s extensive network of contacts within London politics" said his Managing Director

What effect will the new tower have on the setting of this most picturesque group of buildings next door to it on the high street?

The DAAP states that "redevelopment of Kingsland Shopping Centre is the key to unlocking the area’s potential" and that its site is suitable for a 15 storey residential tower. The DAAP has a vision of creating new pedestrian 'shopping circuits' around Dalston to encourage retail led regeneration of the area

The Eastern Curve garden is Dalston's only green haven in a dense urban environment.The DAAP states that the garden is only a temporary use which is awaiting re-development of the shopping centre.

The DAAP vision for the Eastern Curve Garden - re-developed as a kind of 'green shopping mall'

The DAAP promotes the 'conservation led regeneration' of Dalston Lane's Georgian terraces. The Council plans to sell all its houses to a developer, and turn the existing shopkeepers' upper floors into flats, to make the scheme pay for itself. Will the existing businesses survive?

These are just some of the proposals set out in the Dalston Area Action plan. The amended DAAP will influence decisions on planning applications until the final version is set in stone by the government Planning Inspector. Don't miss the chance to make your views known before the consultation closes on 3rd November.

To comment on the DAAP you must complete a Representation Form. They are available at your local library. Alternatively complete the online Form here or download the Form here and email it to ldf@hackney.gov.uk (putting 'Dalston Rep' on the subject line) or post it to Freepost RSLH-ARTC-GXRA, Spatial Planning, 2 Hillman Street, E8 1FB.

Lemn Sissay to star at Arcola's first poetry & jazz event on Sunday 18th September

2011-09-08T18:11:00.015+01:00

Lemn Sissay, the internationally known and award winning poet and playright, is to star at Arcola's poetry & jazz event at 7pm on 18th September .

The event is the first of a new series called "Notes and Quotes" featuring Dalston poet, writer and broadcaster Michael Rosen with guest writers and with improvisation by the Dalston based jazz quintet The Dulce Tones.

Arcola Box Office: 020 7503 1646 and www.arcolatheatre.com

"Gold Dust" - Iain Sinclair highlights radioactive hazards unearthed on London's 2012 Olympic site

2011-08-28T12:36:00.010+01:00

Gold Dust from Mike Wells on Vimeo.

A collaborative performance by the author Iain Sinclair reading from his latest work ‘Ghost Milk’ and the Hackney solicitor/musician Bill Parry-Davies. This rousing performance is illustrated with photographs and video by Mike Wells and Sasha Andrews. It was created to highlight the existence of radioactive contamination on the London 2012 Olympic site

Starkey Ravey Bonkers

2011-08-19T13:44:00.003+01:00

Here's a bit of satire:

And here's a bit of history from November 1993 :

"...Like other sections of Hackney, Stoke Newington endures severe homelessness, poor housing stock and inadequate municipal back- up services. More than 20 per cent of the employable population is out of work. Among Caribbean youths the unemployment rate is more than 37 per cent...".

Hackney's riot heroine interviewed

2011-08-16T22:32:00.008+01:00

Hackney's riot heroine, Pauline Pearce, interviewed in Clarence Road

Another interview with Ms Pearce is here.

Sledge tower. By Barratt. Did anyone ask Percy?

2011-08-11T00:20:00.014+01:00

The latest tower block of unaffordable private flats being erected in Dalston Square is to be called Sledge Tower.

Why so?

An 1886 sketch of Dalston's Circus - the North London Colosseum and Amphitheatre

Dalston Square is built on the ruins of Dalston's 1886 circus building. By 1898 the circus had become a Victorian variety theatre. In 1920 it became the magnificent Gaumont cinema. Then in 1963 it reinvented itself again to become the landmark Club Four Aces - a legendary London club for international black music and a second home for black musicians in Dalston.

In 2007, when owned by Hackney Council , the authorities demolished the circus building, crushed it, ground it up and used it in the foundations for Barratt's New Dalston tower block development.

With the destruction of the circus we lost Dalston's grandest historic building for the performing arts, the oldest circus entrance in the country, locally listed Georgian houses - urban gems - and also the thirty year cultural legacy of Dalston's African-Caribbean community.

So the authorities decided to name the tower blocks of unaffordable private flats after the black musicians associated with the club which they demolished.

Patronising hypocrisy... or what?

Did anyone ask Percy Sledge if he wanted a tower block named after him?

One Hackney woman's view of the riots

2011-08-08T23:05:00.032+01:00

Meanwhile in Dalston the local Turkish and Kurdish communities have been defending their businesses against looters and, if not expecting more trouble, they are ready for it anyway.

PS Since posting these films Pauline Pearce, our Hackney Heroine, has become a media sensation

Where has all Hackney's money gone?

2011-08-04T18:35:00.006+01:00

If you ever wondered how Hackney Council spends your money then, as you see from the Notice below, NOW is the time you can find out.

Hackney Council's Audit of accounts year ended 31 March 2011 Audit Commission Act 1998, sections 15 & 16 Accounts and Audit Regulations 2003 (as amended), regulations 13, 14 & 16

The London Borough of Hackney's accounts are subject to external audit by the Audit Commission (Philip Johnstone, District Auditor, 1^st Floor, Millbank Tower, Millbank, London, SW1P 4HQ -telephone 0844 798 1212). Members of the public and local government electors have certain rights in the audit process:

From 18 July 2011 to 12 August 2011 between 10 am and 4 pm, Monday to Friday, any person may inspect the accounts of the London Borough of Hackney for the year ended 31 March 2011 and certain related documents (comprising books, deeds, contracts, bills, vouchers and receipts) at Keltan House, 89 - 115 Mare St, London E8 4RU (telephone 020 8356 3611). They may also receive copies of the accounts and documents, although excessive copies will be charged for and an appointment may be required.
From 10 am on Monday 15 August 2011, until the conclusion of the audit process, a local government elector for the area of the London Borough of Hackney, or his/her representative may ask the auditor questions about the accounts. Please contact the auditor at the address given above to make arrangements to ask any questions.
From 10 am on Monday 15 August 2011 until the conclusion of the audit process, a local government elector for the area of the London Borough of Hackney, or his/her representative, may object to the London Borough of Hackney's accounts asking that the auditor issue a report in the public interest (under section 8 of the Audit Commission Act 1998) and/or apply to the court for a declaration that an item in the accounts is contrary to law (under section 17 of the Audit Commission Act 1998). Written notice of a proposed objection and the grounds on which it was made must be sent to the auditor at the address given above and copied to me at the following address: Keltan House, 89 - 115 Mare St, London E8 4RU.

The draft Statement of Accounts for submission to the auditor, can be found on Statement of Accounts page.

Ian Williams, CPFA, 30 June 2011

More tall storeys for Dalston Square

2011-07-28T22:13:00.042+01:00

Barratt is launching it's Phase III show flat in Dalston Square on 30 July. Flats are being marketed for sale "off plan" for the final phase of towers to be built in Dalston Square.

Starting with Sledge Tower (up to 19 storeys) there will be 5 more blocks which will be built in a line going south down Dalston Square west side.

The foundations for Sledge Tower have been laid.

Readers will recall that in the great credit freeze of 2008 Barratt's share price crashed by 90% and it laid off thousands of workers nationally. There were nightmares on Mare Street. Would they leave Dalston as half-finished concrete stumps? The deep freeze seemed all embracing.

The Worship of Mammon - from Super-Hero to Sub-Zero.

But Barrett kept building in Dalston. They've been surfing the Olympic wave - East London house prices have held up compared to the mass of unsold new homes lying empty elsewhere in England. New Dalston's Olympic Bus Stop is a project the authorities couldn't allow to fail.

Looking north from Dalston Square which has now been paved

Dalston Square progressed whilst other sites were shelved. Now Barratt are starting to return to the sites, which it had forsaken during the property crash, to complete the abandoned skeletons .

A development in Wolverhampton, abandoned by Barratt three years ago, where now they're back on site.

In the last budget the government announced the latest 'First Buy' bail out for indebted housebuilders. It would lend first time buyers half the 20% deposit interest free on new build homes and housebuilders would lend them the rest.The Dalston Square flats Barratt are now marketing will just qualify for the FirstBuy scheme - the average price of a one-bed flat is £276,000 so it squeezes under the schemes upper limit of £280,000. But first time buyers will also need £13,800 cash (5%) and an income of £60,000 pa to qualify - if not, forget it because there's no affordable housing, despite the massive public funds already invested, in the scheme.

"We had an excellent response (from housebuilders)" said the government spokesman "including from smaller local builders" but it was the top four housebuilders who 'nabbed' 50% of the £180 million FirstBuy bail out fund which the government had set aside. Barratt got £25.6million. It tasted so good Barratt's Chief Executive has even asked for second helpings. Government bail outs help keep house prices above true market levels. Who benefits?

No retailers have yet to move into Dalston Square. There are lots of empty shops elsewhere to choose from in Dalston

Barratt isn't out of the woods yet. It continues to target buy-to-let customers and is keen to point out they'll get a 6.5% return on a Dalston Square investment - asking rents for one beds are £300 per week. Just as well London is awash with rich Chinese and Russian investors who, given the desperate shortage of accommodation for local people, will be able to subsidise their investment at public expense by renting to housing benefit claimants. They can also look forward to the 2012 Olympics when rents will £0000s per week (With the sweetner of 60 hopper buses an hour running from The Slab to Stratford for the period of the games- Ed). And don't forget, if they buy two or more flats they get a special government concession on stamp duty.

Welcome to the Big (Business) Society.

'Wild Hackney' - a Hackney Podcast radio docu-drama

2011-07-27T09:47:00.016+01:00

Wild Hackney is yet another sonic masterpiece brought to us by Hackney Podcast. It's a radio docu-drama taking you through an imaginary landscape of the Lee Valley after the seawater has risen.

Photo by Squint/Opera

Made in response to the canal and the surrounding ancient flood plains, the piece takes as inspiration the Victorian Gothic novel After London by Richard Jefferies. Written in 1885, the book imagines London reverting to nature after a flood, with only a few survivors roaming the marshland.

Click the sidebar 'Hackney Podcast' to have listen -> ->

Using field recordings of the area, the feature moves through scenes of a future Hackney combining elements of documentary and fiction to reflect on the allure of urban ruin.

"This evocative fiction hovers over such moments in an imagined future to make haunting, magical radio" says the Guardian review.

Hackney to become nuclear free zone

2011-07-25T20:12:00.015+01:00

The nuclear trains will stop running on the overground line through Hackney and Dalston for the period of the 2012 Olympics.

Hackney will be a nuclear free zone for the first time since the Council erected signs declaring this fact some 30 years ago.

Iain Sinclair: Futurology

2011-07-02T18:12:00.017+01:00

If you couldn't get a ticket to hear Iain Sinclair at the Vortex last week, with Dalston musicians The Dulce Tones, you can catch him at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Wednesday 6th July .

Sinclair's latest book - Ghost Milk -Calling time on the grand project" - focuses on the river Lea valley and the 2012 Olympic site. A " scorching 400 page diatribe...a literary polemic, full of dazzling phrases and angry denunciation".

The evening includes film by Emily Richardson of Manor Gardens Allotments, blue fence images from Chris Petit, the writer and curator Gareth Evans and a jazz/voice collaboration with OPEN's founder, East London lawyer and saxophonist Bill Parry-Davies.

"We are all suckling on this new chemical, this ghost milk, this substance that buffers between the old dream of London that I have and the computer generated , perfected, hard edged dream where nothing is what it looks like"

Banned author, Iain Sinclair, to visit Dalston's Vortex Jazz club. Tuesday 28 June at 8pm.

2011-06-18T11:17:00.051+01:00

Iain Sinclair, the banned author,will be reading and discussing his new book "Ghost Milk" at Dalston's Vortex jazz club on Tuesday 28th June at 8pm.

As part of the Vortex Wordplay series the evening will also feature music from the Dulce Tones - the musicians who performed at OPEN Dalston's St Barnabas event last September.

You can buy tickets here for £5 in advance

Ghost milk. "What does this mean?" Sinclair is asked

"CGI smears on the blue fence" he replies. "Real juice from a virtual host. Embalming fluid. A soup of photographic negatives. Soul food for the dead. The universal element in which we sink and swim"

"You can't write about this. They'll never believe it" Anna Sinclair warns Iain, her husband.

But now he has written about it. All of it. Ghost Milk.

"A wonderful kind of alchemy is at work" J G Ballard observed in Sinclair's writing. The Sunday Times described his work as "remarkable, compelling, bristles with unexpected, frequently lurid life".

Photo copyright of Mike Wells

Hackney's ban on Sinclair was imposed in October 2008 just prior to the publication of his last book "Hackney,that rose-red empire. A confidential report"

"We should not host an event which....actively promotes an opinion which contradicts our aims and values as an organisation - in this case the 2012 games and legacy. I have discussed the PR ramifications of this with Jules Pipe [Hackney's Mayor -Ed.] and he is comfortable with this approach"
Polly Rance, Head of Media, Hackney Council

Photo copyright of Alan Denney

The Council's invitation to Sinclair to speak in Stoke Newington was withdrawn even before the book had been read.

"Now I was one of them, promoted to the status of non-person" writes Sinclair in Ghost Milk. "I took it as a tribute, after all this time, to be thought worthy of being invited to leave the premises....My docu-novel closed with the erection of the blue fence around the Olympic Park...".

Burrowing under the perimeter fence of the grandest of Grand Projects - the giant myth that is the 2012's London Olympics - Ghost Milk finds a landscape under sentance of death...

"Sinclair's most powerful statement yet on the throwaway impermanence of the present."

Photo copyright of Mike Wells - 2.5 million cu metres of spoil, including radioactive material, is moved around the 2012 Olympic site

Sinclair's Acknowledgements in Ghost Milk includes a final dedication to Hackney's Mayor Jules Pipe "...a constant inspiration as he remakes the borough of Hackney as a model surrealist wonderland".

Dalston's Transport Interchange "vision" to be realised (not)

2011-06-02T16:56:00.034+01:00

Transport for London and Hackney Council may be triumphant now that their vision for a rail/bus Transport Interchange for Dalston will be realised when the 488 bus route extension from Clapton to Dalston Junction starts running this Saturday 4th June. However we were originally told that 70 buses an hour would use the Transport Interchange but it now turns out that only the 488 bus will use it (That's five 488 buses an hour, at peak times).

The bus stop is on The Slab, a massive concrete raft which was built over the Dalston Junction railway station so that bus and rail passengers could conveniently 'interchange' within the site. It was said at the time that there was nowhere else that the buses could stop. So The Slab had to be built - along with hundreds of private tower block flats for sale to pay for it. But TfL has since decided that other buses must continue to use the old bus stops after all because driving onto The Slab would just delay passengers. The cost of The Slab has risen from £26millon to £39 million and is now expected to cost £63million - just for one bus stop to service the 488.

At the time of the last Mayoral election Hackney said it was "fighting for a Transport Interchange" but it is not yet known if Hackney's Mayor Pipe will be on board the first 488 when it pulls onto The Slab on Saturday. Nevertheless if you want to line the route cheering and waving (or whatever) as it progresses from Clapton to Dalston you will find the route here.

Local people have not shown enormous enthusiasm for the £63million of public expenditure and the bus stop was sold for just £7.50 at OPEN's mock public auction last September. The lucky purchaser from Clapton, who preferred to remain anonymous, said "The 488 will be really handy for me to get the train from Dalston but I do agree that a £63million Transport Interchange seems a lot for the public to pay just for my convenience"

Redevelopment proposed for 67A-76 Dalston Lane

2011-05-20T17:52:00.038+01:00

This is the image presented for a redevelopment proposal which is now out for public consultation. It will shortly be considered for planning permission. The site is at 67A-76 Dalston Lane next to Martel Place mini-roundabout leading to the car park at the back of Matalan and the Kingsland Shopping Centre.

This view is facing south from the Dalston Lane bridge over the North London Line

The high density development, promoted by a private developer, will consist of 2 blocks - the block facing Dalston Lane is for rented flats and is between 5 - 7 storeys and, behind it, the second block for private flats ranges from 7 - 10 storeys. The development will include 119 new flats in all - 66% of the flats are one and two bedrooms and 5 flats are 4 bedrooms. 40% of the habitable rooms are to be in the 44 "affordable" flats of which 26 are for social renting. No 'key worker' accommodation is identified in the scheme. The development will be "car free" but there will be 8 "disability spaces" and 130 bike spaces.

The site is within a Priority Employment Area (PEA)) where the Council’s policies seek employment-led mixed-use development. The development also comprises "modern, flexible business space suited for office, studio and light-industrial activities and capable of supporting in the region of 90 jobs." Presently, the developers say, there are a range of light industrial "dilapidated and unremarkable" buildings which accommodate a second-hand car parts dealer, a car and van hire business, a paper supplier and "20 studio spaces used by artists and designers". In fact there are over 40 artists and designers using the studios at present. All the existing buildings will be demolished and transformed into a "coherent piece of townscape" - in which affordable studio space for artists will be absent.

Although the development comprises two blocks the mix of black and gray cladding "in different densities creates the actual visual effect of the scheme is that of a number of much smaller blocks of varying height" which, it is said,"responds to the varied character and form of the townscape around the site" ( the area is predominantly 2 -4 storey houses) and which "won’t dominate the skyline or views from the conservation areas" (of which the 4-storey Victorian terrace directly over the road in Dalston Lane is part).

"Sustainability" features prominently in the promotional material - the development will achieve "an overall reduction in CO2 emissions of 21.2% when compared with a comparable baseline building".

If you want to learn more about the scheme follow this link by clicking here

The consultation officially closes on 30.5.11 but the Council will usually consider comments received up to the date of the Planning Committee hearing. If you want to comment on the scheme follow this link by clicking here.

European Court to consider UK's failure to provide environmental justice

2011-05-19T18:12:00.022+01:00

The European Commission has asked the European Court of Justice to consider whether there are adequate legal remedies available to UK citizens challenging environmental injustice.

The European Court of Justice

Since 2005 the UK has been a signatory to the 1998 Aarhus Convention which recognises that protection of the environment is essential to the health and well being of present and future generations. Aarhus requires the UK to ensure that the public have access to information about development proposals which could adversely affect our environment, including cultural sites and buildings, and that the public can participate effectively in decision making and have affordable and fair access to the Courts to obtain adequate and timely remedies.

The huge cost, and the financial risks to individuals, of Court action is one of the main barriers to citizens challenging environmental injustice. As a result wealthy developers are free to adopt hazardous procedures and transform areas of the UK into monocultural natural and built environments so that local character and bio-diversity is lost.

Earthworks, containing radioactive thorium & other toxic waste, in progress on the 2012 Olympic site. An individual was refused legal aid to challenge the authorities methods despite the wider public interests involved.

By adopting a company format OPEN has been able to protect its individual members from the risk of personal liability but, despite several legal challenges on behalf of local communities, the Courts have always refused to place a cap on the legal costs which a developer could claim against OPEN if a legal challenge were to be lost.

In a report about environmental justice in May 2008 Lord Justice Sullivan said "Unless more is done, and the Courts' approach to costs is altered so as to recognise that there is a public interest in securing compliance with environmental law, it is only a matter of time before the UK is taken to task for failing to live up to its obligations under Aarhus".

Happily, with the UK's referral to the European Court of Justice, that time may now have come.

PS Last week the UN ruled that the European Court must stop barring citizens from challenging European Union decisions that affect the environment. The European Union itself, as well as its member states, is subject to the Aarhus Convention.

Under the Cranes

2011-04-14T20:42:00.004+01:00

Don't miss this new film shot in Hackney and directed by Emma-Louise Williams. ‘Under the Cranes’ is showing at the Rio on Saturday 30 April at 1.30pm.

The film is a meditation on place as central to our experience of history. Using the script of poet Michael Rosen’s documentary play, the film is intercut with rarely seen archive footage, much of which shows the locality’s commitment to social housing. As we hear from the famous – Shakespeare in Shoreditch, Anna Sewell, Anna Barbauld – alongside a Jamaican builder, a Bangladeshi restaurant owner or the Jewish 43 Group taking on Oswald Mosley in Dalston, we see past and present streets, parks, cemeteries and markets.

‘If you let it, a street will grow,’ says a voice as the film shows ‘layers of lives’, offering a lyrical, painterly defence of the everyday even as it raises questions about the process of ‘regeneration’

While David Cameron claims that ‘multiculturalism has failed’, this film celebrates how ‘the world comes to Hackney’.

In terms of both the visual and the aural, the film heightens the real: the soundscape mixes documentary with poetry, music, song and location recordings, while the picture juxtaposes slow, still shots with paintings by East London artists, Leon Kossoff, Jock McFadyen and James MacKinnon. Breaking with the linear narrative convention, the audience is invited to apprehend the city as fragmentary and multi-layered. – “past in the present; present in the past.

The films Director, Dalston resident Emma-Louise Williams, had produced and directed numerous radio and television programmes. One theme running throughout her work is how we experience the metropolis. Emma has sought to counter the prevailing attitude to the inner city as a site of failure, ugliness and misdeed, through what she terms a‘socio-poetic of everyday life’.

Planners get hyped in Dalston

2011-04-12T23:49:00.010+01:00

You can visit this exhibition City Visions 1910/2010 in Dalston Square from 9th April until 14th May (including Sundays but not Mondays) . It's about 100 years of great planning projects. Apparently Dalston Square is rated as an exciting example of 'regeneration' (Regeneration? Don't they mean replacement? Ed).

Here's a take on another development that's worth a look.

THE DUBAI IN ME - Christian Von Borries
Uploaded by reseaumarseillais. - Classic TV and last night's shows, online.

Let us know what you think - leave a comment.

Shoreditch needs your help to Ditch the Block

2011-04-04T18:45:00.018+01:00

OPEN Shoreditch member Jago Action Group is taking up arms against the gross over development of the Huntingdon Estate, the light industrial estate bordered by Bethnal Green Road and Redchurch Street. Developers Londonnewcastle are so passionate about the neighbourhood that they want to bless this low-rise mixed residential quarter with a 25-storey tower block

( Err...surely "to dig themselves out of the large hole in their balance sheet, as a result of taking an option on the site at the height of the property boom." )

ACT NOW - the planners have asked for any objections by 19th April.

You'll find all the key information here .

Click on image to enlarge

Budget bail out for Barratt

2011-03-28T20:11:00.029+01:00

George Osborne's budget has provided a boost to property developers who have been struggling to sell because banks have been demanding 25% deposits from homebuyers since the 2008 credit freeze. Under the budgets new FirstBuy scheme first time buyers can pay just 5% deposit and the government, in partnership with developers, lend them the remaining 20%. The FirstBuy scheme is similar to the HomeBuy Direct scheme offered a year ago when Dalston Square Phase 1 was being marketed.

This photo is of Dalston Square Phase 2 - the wraps and scaffolding came off the Dalston Lane end this week

Dalston Square developer, Barratt's Chief Executive Mark Clare, described the Chancellor's budget as "exactly the tonic the housing market needed" . No doubt Barratt's shareholders agreed with him when they saw their share values surge as news of the public subsidy leaked out.

The budget also offers Buy to Let landlords a saving on stamp duty if they buy in bulk - so Barratt's Far East marketing of Dalston Square will get a boost from that too.

A broker, from market analysts Liberum Capital, said it should be helpful. "This is probably not the best way to help the housing market, but it does help to protect jobs among the housebuilders". Yes....and bonuses. Mark Clare earned £5680,000 bonus last year but thousands of Barratt's construction workers were laid off during the credit crunch.

Why the government is offering further public subsidy to property developers and private buyers is a mystery - despite massive public subsidy there is to be no social housing in Dalston Square Phase 2 which is all for private sale.

And we are seeing property developers queuing up to cash in on the budget's "buy now pay later" scheme for disposal of "surplus" publically owned land.

Dalston Square Phase 1 on the left and Phase 2, on the Slab above the station, on the right.

Other concessions to property developers offered in the budget include "streamlining" the planning system. How will this sit with the government's " localism" agenda which it says will give local people more say in the way our environments are developed? We continue to see open and green space, and historic architecture, redeveloped despite local people's campaigns against the loss of bio-diversity and local character. Here's one example and here's another and there are more battles are in the pipeline.

Oi! Over 'ear.

2011-03-03T18:10:00.009Z

Those wonderful people who produce the sonic experience of Hackney Podcast have now got even more inspired. They are working on using a GPS triggered app for smartphones so that as you wander around Hackney the app triggers an oral and musical soundscape which relates to wherever you happen to be at the time. So how cool is that! It's called Hackney Hear. Watch this to find more about it:

About Hackney Hear from Hackney Hear on Vimeo.

Francesca Panetta, executive producer and editor, has received numerous awards for Hackney Podcast's work including Golds at New York Festivals Radio Program and Promotion Awards and Sony Radio Academy Awards last year. She said of the new project "One of the things that really appeals to me is the democracy of it - the famous will juxtapose with the locals aurally as you walk the streets. It will sound sonically beautiful. There will also be archive so you feel the layers of Hackney as well as drawing on the variety of artists in the borough."

If you know people who can help, with funding or creative contributions, then ask them to email Hackney Podcast [hackneypodcast@googlemail.com]

Get the Dalston to Dalston line to get to the 2012 Olympics

2011-02-24T14:02:00.050Z

The final stage of the East London Overground Line northern extension, from Dalston Junction to Highbury & Islington, is to open on Monday.

We now have two Dalston stations with lines going to Highbury - the North London (Orbital) Line from Dalston Kingsland station and the East London Line overground extension from Dalston Junction station. So why the luxury of two?

Readers will recall the Secretary of State saying that the new Dalston Transport Interchange (the rail/bus interchange built over Dalston Junction railway cutting) "will be a major transport interchange between the East London Line northern extension, the North London line and London buses, as essential part of transport improvements required for the London Olympics 2012".

But the East London line at Dalston Junction doesn't go to the 2012 Olympic site at Stratford. Nor does it interchange with the North London line, at Dalston Kingsland station, which does. And the one bus which will use The Slab above the Dalston Junction station doesn't go to the Olympic site either - despite the £63million spent on it.

The bus stop on The Slab at Dalston Square which is to be used by just one bus - not the 60 per hour which we were told it was built for.

When we met the London Development Agency (LDA), with OPEN's patron Lord Low, we pointed all this out. We were told by the LDA that it would not be the first Transport Interchange to have been built in the wrong place... but the problem was not insurmountable.

Now those clever people at TfL have solved the problem. People using the East London line can now get the train from Dalston Junction to Highbury, change onto the North London line, and travel back via Dalston Kingsland to get to the 2012 Olympic site at Stratford. Hurrah!

Still, mustn't grumble - the £63million spent on The Slab is only TfL's money wasted, not ours. Isn't it?

Yes - if you believed TfL's Head of Communications. He wrote a letter to the Hackney Gazette, when TfL was promoting the Transport Interchange back in 2006 -"It is currently proposed that TfL will meet the cost of the rail station and the potential bus station".

But sadly it didn't turn out like that.

Massive demolitions took place in Dalston between 2007 and 2010 so that "high revenue generating" developments (private flats and retail) could be built to help fund the £63million cost of The Slab

Hackney paid millions by selling their site to Barratt for a peppercorn to cross-subsidise TfL's Slab, our historic buildings were demolished, and Dalston's environment has been blighted by overbearing towers blocking out the light.

The old 1886 Dalston Circus and 1898 Variety Theatre were demolished to create the development site for Barratt's blocks of private flats.

Further demolitions, of some 20 buildings, were then required to renew the tunnel to extend the East London line to Highbury and Islington

The demolitions have left Dalston, as someone said, looking like an old friend who has had her teeth knocked out. Hit by a runaway train more like.

This is the view north from Dalston Lane showing the demolition sites on Kingsland Road above the renewed tunnel to Highbury.

(PS - When will Tfl announce that 60 hopper buses an hour will be ferrying people from The Slab to Stratford for the three week 2012 Olympic event? And that's why the £63millon Slab was built. And why old Dalston was demolished and replaced with tower blocks to help pay for it. Ed.).

Barratt Dalston Square Phase 2 - 90% sold

2011-02-20T13:45:00.021Z

Barratt's Dalston Square Phase 2 is cracking on at a time when there remains uncertainty in the housing market and bank mortgages are hard to come by ( unless you are a buy-to let investor) .

In January last year Mark Clare, chief executive of Barratt, one of the UK’s biggest housebuilders, said: “There is definitely more buy-to-let availability now than there was. Lenders are telling us that rather than increasing loan availability to first-time buyers, they are preferring to lend to buy-to-let investors.”

Now Barratt claims that 90% of the private flats being built in Dalston Square Phase 2 have been sold off-plan. Have they been sold to owner-occupiers - or are overseas buy-to-let investors moving in? This recent promotional piece about Dalston Square in the Hong Kong Standard below gives us a clue - there was similar overseas promotion for Phase 1 as well.

Click on image to enlarge

Buy-to-let investment by cash rich overseas buyers keeps prices artificially high, squeezes out first time buyers and creates transient communities on short term tenancies with no long term commitment to the area. Is it not depressing that the £millions of public money which has subsidised this scheme, which has no affordable housing, is not benefitting local people or even Londoners.

The twelve days of Christmas....

2010-12-08T21:59:00.181Z

Twelve legends dining

This image, by Brian Cumming, shows some of the stars of popular entertainment who were associated with the now demolished 1886 Dalston Theatre buildings. They include Sir Robert Fossett (1886 circus owner), Marie Lloyd (1870-1922 Hackney's very own international music hall star), Stevie Wonder (played there in 1963 with his American band), Desmond Dekker (played there in 1969 - with the first UK reggae hit 'The Israelites'), Bob Marley (ate curry goat there), The Prodigy (began their career there) and the Sex Pistols. You can read about the demolition of old Dalston in the story that was never told here. Hackney Council demolished the historic buildings in 2007 to help fund New Dalston's tower blocks, brand name shops and a bus station on The Slab in Dalston.

Eleven pipers piping

Last year Hackney Mayor Pipe's Cabinet approved the purchase of two development sites on the north side of Dalston Lane, in Ashwin Street. The Cabinet report referred ominously to a "natural progression of the Dalston Square development". OPEN Dalston with others secured the Hackney Mayor's agreement to survey the old Ashwin Street houses, one of which had been fire damaged. But then, without any assessment of whether the houses could be made safe, and without the requisite planning approval, Hackney demolished the four old houses this year (Ahem...nothing natural about that then - Ed).

"You know what?... We could demolish the lot." ...from Michael Rosen's Regeneration Blues

Ten Lords a leaping

Construction by Barratt of Dalston Square Phase 2 began this year.Their Lordships of the Court of Appeal upheld Wakefield District Council's policy that 30% of all new homes built locally by Barratt should be affordable. But in Dalston, despite their policy targets of 50% affordable housing, Hackney Council and the Greater London Authority rolled over. Barratt will be building no affordable housing as part of the Dalston Square Phase 2 development on The Slab above Dalston Junction railway station - although £millions of public money has been spent subsidising the scheme. This year the London authorities quietly abandoned their affordable housing targets, but refused to justify their decision to the public, and Hackney's Mayor Pipe , now Chair of the London Councils, announced the departure of the poor and the "economically inactive" from the inner city of London.

Nine Ladies Dancing

In July the Council adopted new powers to enable its Licensing Committee to operate a policy of "Nil" tolerance of 'sex entertainment'. If used it will criminalise erotic entertainment - striptease, burlesque, gay cabaret and the like. The policy will target two striptease pubs owned by women in Shoreditch . But recently the local council estate tenants' associations, and the Vicar, have come out in their support, whilst condemning the numerous other late-night bars and off-licenses for the drunken ante-social behavior plaguing the area. Will women will be safer in Shoreditch if such activities are criminalised and no longer subject to Council regulation and control? Do the police have the resources to cope when the gangsters take over? What would Hoxton born Marie Lloyd have made of it all? You can find out more by watching this short film "Hands Off" in which dancers, costumiers, business owners, the Vicar of St Leonards Church and others all have their say.

Eight years of fighting
This year Spirit lost his final, eight year, battle for justice in the Court of Appeal following last year defeat when a county court judge dismissed his claim for compensation . Hackney's auctioneers sold his property in 2001 to an off-shore landlord - for less than Spirit had offered to pay."He was plainly proud of the business which he had built up since 1993. It is sad that this was taken from him "said the Judge "It is unfortunate that these offshore companies are purchasing properties and are able to avoid the same fees and taxes which others would have to pay". We saw Court Bailiffs abandon plans to take possession of Spirit's home and shop after a rally of local people gathered on Broadway Market to show their support for one of the street's best loved characters. Shortly afterwards, to avoid confrontation, Spirit gave up his keys to his landlord.

Seven pounds fifty
£7.50 was all the public were prepared to pay, at OPEN's auction, for Dalston's £63million bus stop. Construction of the new bus stop on The Slab in Dalston involved the demolition of the old Snooker Hall to create a ramp from the Slab down onto Kingsland Road. The cost of The Slab had risen from £26m to £39m to £63million - a massive, scandalously expensive and carbon heavy concrete raft built over the Dalston Junction railway cutting in 2009 which, the Secretary of State told OPEN, was necessary to site a bus/rail Interchange as "an essential part of the transport infrastructure needed for the 2012 Olympics" (Excuse me.... the buses and trains from Dalston don't actually go to Stratford - Ed). OPEN learnt this year that only one bus will in fact use The Slab (the 488 route) - not the 60 buses an hour TfL said justified the expense and the demolition of Old Dalston to pay for it. Boris' GLA then delivered a deluge of drivel to try and cover up the scandal of Dalston's £63million bus stop. But, as you can see from the photo, the bus stop remains deserted and the 488 seems to be running late.

Six blackened buildings
In previous years they burned down old buildings on Dalston's development sites and last year they painted our surviving Georgian houses black - a somber reminder of the charred remains or a dark vision of more funeral pyres to come? This year, after four fires, three demolitions and OPEN Dalston's long campaign, Hackney finally listened to our community and bought the terrace back from the off-shore slum landlord (For double what it had sold them for at the auction in 2002 - Ed). Now, in the age of austerity when money is scarce, and despite the Council's fine words, the buildings remain derelict and at risk. There are young people occupying some of these surviving fragments of Dalston's past. They know the sad history of our local heritage. Quite why Hackney wants to evict the occupiers, who at least keep the houses wind and watertight, remains a mystery.

Five gold rings

Seb Coe denied, to the bitter end, that the 2012 London Olympic park was radioactive.
Thanks to JT for the images
Last year OPEN learned of the extensive radioactive contamination across the London Olympic 2012 site which had been dug up and spread around during 2.5 million cu. metres of earthmoving and landscaping works. The regulatory authorities - the Environment Agency and local Council's - had left it to the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) to manage the risks by means of planning permission conditions. But the ODA is not just the planning authority - it is the developer of the site as well. Extensive stockpiling, and the burial on the site of 7,000 tonnes of radioactive waste, has been carried out without any prior planning permission at all. OPEN called for an independent report - and the expert's conclusions which we have seen are shocking. Finally, this year, the GLA has announced an inquiry into how this happened. What will the environmental legacy be for future generations?

Four Aces Club

Winstan's Whitter's documentary "Legacy in the dust" tells the story of Dalston's legendary reggae club, its relationship with the Council and the police, how it went on to become the Labyrinth and the eventual demolition of its original home in the historic Dalston Theatre buildings. The film is attracting attention and featured as part of the Reggae Rebels exhibition in Hackney Museum. And now Newton Dunbar, who ran the club for over 30 years, is back in action in Dalston with the Four Aces Club Roadshow. Oh yeah!

Three writers speak

The Worship of Mammon 1909 by Evelyn de Morgan, updated 2009 by dunkdigital.com

In the third year of the credit freeze, when the bubble burst and banks went bust, three writers spoke at an OPEN cultural/political soiree in Dalston. David Garrrard of English Heritage told us about Dalston's little know architectural gem, the 1911 Grade 2 listed St Barnabas' Church, where the event was held; Iain Sinclair read extracts from his current work & alluded to the world of virtual money and Michael Rosen performed his improvised jazz poem Regeneration Blues with local musicians The Dulce Tones. The event also featured the presentation of the Ceausescue Golden Spoon Award by Steve Butters and a speech from OPEN's Patron Lord Low of Dalston. Special thanks to Arcola Theatre for the carbon-free lighting, Rev. Giles Fouhy for hosting the event, OPEN volunteers and to the BBC World Service for giving it wider coverage.

Two spaces greened

This year we saw local community aspirations bear fruit with the landscaping and planting of the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden and the Bootstrap Roof Park on top of Ashwin Street's Reeves Printhouse. In a area previously bereft, these green oasis provide places where people meet plants, places for learning, for celebrations and for solace. And we've even got a FARM in a shop in Dalston too with chickens on the roof (That's enough crowing - Ed). Also the New Year will see Arcola Theatre moving to the heart of Dalston, into the Colourworks building, bringing plans for a carbon free eco-theatre and building their national reputation from our local hub of cultural excellence in Ashwin Street.

And a retail opportunity

Image gimped by sdit.org.uk

Last year OPEN Dalston consulted the local community about Hackney's proposals for a massive residential/retail led 8-storey redevelopment of Dalston Cross shopping centre. But although the credit freeze poured cold water on Hackney's aspirations, Tesco progressed its plans for twin 12-storey residential towers on top of a new redeveloped Tesco superstore in Morning Lane which will overshadow St John in Hackney churchyard gardens and Hackney's oldest monument, St Augustine's tower. Tesco's consultants swore blind that the doubling of car spaces in the new Mega-Tesco would miraculously reduce existing traffic gridlock at the Mare Street junction -but the Planning Committee saw through them, and despite its officers recommendations, rejected the scheme. So it's back to the drawing board and more schmoozing required for Tesco.

".... The latest blocks, blindly monolithic, devour pavements and abolish bus stops. They aspire to an occult geometry of capital: Queensbridge Quarter, Dalston Square. Everything is contained, separate, protected from flow and drift. No junk mail, please. No doorstep hawkers. No doorsteps. The big idea is to build in-station car parks, to control ‘pedestrian permeability’, so that clients of the transport system exit directly into a shopping mall. Where possible, a supermarket operator underwrites the whole development, erecting towers on site, so that Hackney becomes a suburb of Tesco, with streets, permanently under cosmetic revision, replaced by 24-hour aisles. Light and weather you can control. Behaviour is monitored by a discreet surveillance technology."
Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books, June 2009

An artist's impression of Barratt's Dalston Square shopping heaven - private high-rise flats and national brand stores - all to pay for The Slab and Dalston's £63million bus stop. Click on image to enlarge.

OPEN goes international with the BBC World Service!

2010-11-05T17:36:00.023Z

The BBC's World Service investigative journalist, Nina Robinson, came to the OPEN event at St Barnabas Church on 16th September. She has been making a series of four programmes called " Great Expectations: Living in the shadow of London 2012". She explores local peoples' experiences of the build up to 2012 and asks the question "How will regeneration affect those who need it most?".

Nina Robinsons's fourth programme, called "Inspiring real legacy", starts with a recording of Michael Rosen performing 'Regeneration Blues' with The Dulce Tones ( click on the SideBar link to hear the full performance) at the OPEN event. About 16 minutes into the programme, she arrives in Dalston to investigate The Slab. You can listen to the BBC World Service podcast here.

Towards the end of the podcast you can hear our elected official, Councillor Nicholson, who expresses the Council's views about the benefits of The Slab.

He was the one who wrote, back in February 2006 on behalf of Hackney's Mayor, that the Dalston Square development would be "a high design development that is on a human scale". But Hackney's own Director of Regeneration said at the time that TfL's development on The Slab (Dalston Square, Phase 2) was "austere" and "a stark concrete tower with punched openings for windows". TfL's own environmental consultants advised that "all local conservation areas will be adversely affected..there will be loss of traditional and human scale...sunlighting losses will begin to occur as the development progresses...".

TfL's Dalston Square Phase 2 is now under construction on The Slab

Councillor Nicholson also wrote that the Hackney site (Dalston Square Phase 1) scheme would have "Affordable housing as close to 50% of the development that can be afforded that is mixed across the development, not just 'in a corner', and includes 30% family accommodation". But, of the 550 flats granted planning permission for both phases of the Dalston Square scheme, only 5% (28 flats) will be affordable social housing and only 4% (22 flats) would be family size homes (4 beds or over).

So you might want to bear that in mind when you listen to what Councillor Nicholson has to say to the BBC World Service podcast - Part4 "Inspiring real legacy".

On Hallowe'en Dalston was dead...but not buried.

2010-10-30T23:02:00.032+01:00

The living dead with strangefolk, ghouls, ghosts and witches

drifted north up ancient Ermine Street (Earninga Straete)

from Hoxton Square to Dalston

to celebrate Hallowe'en in Gillett Square

and as dawn threatened their reverie

they fled away to continue the celebrations

with more dancing and feasting in Passing Clouds

"Houses good. Flats bad" says Barratt (but it's too late for Dalston).

2010-10-22T00:15:00.021+01:00

Barratt's Chief Executive Mark Clare is on a charm offensive 'We are trying to build what our customers want rather than what we thought they wanted or what the planners wanted’ explains Clare. But his comments are not purely altruistic. ‘We are also moving away from flats as fast as we can because people can’t get mortgages on them’ he adds.

Despite the thousands of overcrowded families on Hackney's waiting list it's a once in a lifetime missed opportunity for Dalston as Barratt lashes up another 9 blocks of 330 private flats for sale at Dalston Square.

Although Barratt predicts a double-dip in house prices there's no sign of it in Dalston - East London house prices have been surfing the Olympic 2012 wave. Barratt, laden with debt, needs to keep prices high and has been drip feeding supply and continuing its overseas marketing to target cash rich buy-to-let investors. As we have reported previously two thirds of homes built in London last year were reportedly sold to buy-to-let purchasers.

The government's latest spending cuts slash subsidy for affordable housing, and housing benefit, so local people now have even less chance of buying or renting an affordable home. But is Barratt's Mark Clare bovvered? He's had a £568,000 bonus this year and he's won the £1billion deal to rebuild Basildon.
The crash in land values has reportedly seen housebuilders stocking up on development sites at bargain prices - but still they argue against building affordable homes. One authority, Wakefield Council, has sucessfully fought for its 30% affordable housing targets in one new Barratt development.

But in Dalston, Hackney and the GLA rolled over. They say that, because of the eyewatering sums of public money they have already spent 0n the £63million Slab, they've waived the rules. Despite their policy targets of 50% affordable homes, no affordable housing can be built on The Slab at all. So when Hackney's Mayor Pipe calls The Slab "a useful bit of development land" one has to ask "Useful to whom?"

Boris! It's a deluge of drivel.

2010-10-12T23:15:00.037+01:00

The outcome of Boris' investigation into the scandalous £63million cost of The Slab, on which Dalston's bus/rail Transport Interchange has been built, has revealed nothing to the public about the actual cost of the Slab or how the cost ran out of control.

Boris Johnson had agreed, at the GLA Mayor's Question Time, to investigate the cost of The Slab in Dalston.

But instead of commenting on the cost, and knowing of the public's disgust at the wanton destruction of historic Dalston to pay for The Slab, Boris' Answer asserts "The only building to be demolished to make way for the scheme was the snooker hall on Kingsland Road".

Really....?

So what happened to the old 1865 station?

And what happened to 2 Dalston Lane next to the old station?
And what happened to the cottages in Rosebery Place on the railway embankment?

And what happened to our locally listed Georgian houses on Hackney's site next door?

And what happened to Dalston Theatre?

And what happened to the oldest circus entrance in the country which became home to the legendary Four Aces Club?

All these historic buildings were in fact demolished by the authorities to maximise the development potential of their sites to help fund the cost of The Slab.

So when Boris says "The only building to be demolished to make way for the scheme was the snooker hall on Kingsland Road" it appears that he has been seriously misled. It's a deluge of drivel.

Not that the making of misleading statements by the authorities is anything new.

Right from the start TfL told OPEN, in writing, that "regarding the Hackney site there is little heritage effect from our proposals". But a few months later it was revealed that demolition of Dalston's heritage buildings and redevelopment of their site was part of the authorities' deal to pay for the The Slab. They called it "cross subsidy" - Hackney sold the site for a peppercorn and will rent back the library from Barratt.

And when OPEN obtained injunctions to stop the demolitions, for the alternative scheme to be considered, Hackney's solicitor wrote to tell us that the demolitions were a requirement of TfL. The LDA was to pay the demolition costs. Both are agencies of the GLA. The LDA even wrote to the Court to say that unless Dalston Theatre and the Georgian houses were demolished The Slab scheme would be financially unviable and would collapse.

And, throughout the time, the authorities told us that New Dalston's Transport Interchange on The Slab would be used by 80 buses an hour. But now, when it is revealed that only one bus route may in fact use it, we are told that the demolition of old Dalston and the £63million cost of The Slab was a necessary investment in future (unspecified) transport needs.

So it's more tall storeys from the GLA - another nine blocks of private flats for sale are being built on The Slab using public subsidy and with no affordable housing at all.
So if Boris can say "The only building to be demolished to make way for the scheme was the snooker hall on Kingsland Road" would it be surprising if members of the public don't believe anything the authorities tell us in the future?

The site of Hackney's Dalston Theatre and locally listed Georgian houses which were demolished to make way for The Slab Transport Interchange scheme

The Vandals: an eastern Germanic tribe which earned notoriety by sacking Rome in the 5th century but which was defeated by the Goths.
Vandalism: the gratuitous anti-social destruction of the environment and artistic creations.
Municipal vandalism: the destruction of our cultural heritage by corporate ignorance, deliberate neglect, vanity and greed all in the name of progress.

Arts superstars support Dalston's Arcola Theatre

2010-09-30T18:28:00.008+01:00

Arcola Theatre has launched its first-ever public fundraising appeal with the announcement that Antony Gormley and Katharine Hamnett have joined forces with the theatre to support its ambitious fund-raising efforts.

£150,000 is required to secure the first stage of Arcola Theatre’s future development, which includes its relocation to 24 Ashwin Street - the former Colourworks factory opposite Dalston Junction station.

The launch took place at 24 Ashwin Street and Artistic Director Mehmet Ergen and the Arcola team gave future audiences a first glimpse of the new space, still under development, ahead of the first public performance on 7 January 2011.

To help kick-off fundraising efforts, Antony Gormley has donated an original artwork created just for Arcola that will be auctioned at a special gala event in December. Gormley’s design will also be printed onto T-shirts, which will be given to the first 200 individuals to make donations of £500 or over.

Fashion designer and ethical clothing innovator Katharine Hamnett has also come on-board and revived her iconic 80s CHOOSE LIFE slogan T-shirt with a fitting new logo for the theatre – CHOOSE ARCOLA.

Speaking of her involvement, Hamnett said: “Arcola Theatre needs all the financial support we can give it. It has been a testing ground for many great plays and had valuable involvement with the local community - from an over 50’s club to a Turkish theatre programme in Turkish - we need it to carry on.”

www.arcolatheatre.com

http://www.arcolatheatre.com/gallery2/v/Future_Arcola/

Dalston's £63million bus stop sold for £7.50 at public auction.

2010-09-24T18:12:00.080+01:00

An auction of Dalston's £63million bus stop, which has been built on The Slab over Dalston Junction station, took place at an OPEN public event on 16.9.10. The event was packed with Dalston residents for an evening which included literature, poetry, music, local news and satire. The politico-cultural soiree was delivered, almost without exception, by performers from our local creative community who live within walking distance of the venue.

If you missed the OPEN event at St Barnabas Church then here is your chance to listen to podcasts of what took place ( go to the OPEN podcast site here).

David Garrard of English Heritage told us how the Grade II* listed St Barnabas church ("the building I should like to be remembered by") was designed by the architect, Charles Herbert Reilly. And how the pre-modernist 1911 brick and concrete Byzantine basilica had been softened by a core of vivid colour and decoration, much of it provided by the Liverpool sculptor Tyson Smith.

St Barnabas Church, Shacklewell Row. Photo courtesy of English Heritage

On the night of the event the church had been lit to stunning effect using Arcola's carbon free hydrogen lighting, which created an atmosphere of intimacy and enchantment.

Event lighting and photos courtesy of Arcola's David Salter.

Also from Arcola Theatre its producer and playwright Leyla Nazli, and Arcola Energy's Dr Ben Todd, told us of the 10 year history of building Arcola's national reputation in Dalston and its public appeal for £150K to help their current move to the Colourworks in Ashwin Street, Dalston.

A recent street party in Ashwin Street in front of the Reeves Printhouse and Colourworks

Antony Gormley, who has donated an artwork for auction, and designer Katharine Hamnett have joined forces with the Arcola Theatre to support its ambitious fund-raising efforts

Also at the event was writer, poet and filmaker Iain Sinclair who read from, and talked about, his latest work - and touched on the world of virtual money, anomally cancellation, the disappearance of £millions from the 2010 Olympic site in clouds of radioactive dust and the make do and mend austerity Olympics of 1948 ( hear him on the OPEN podcast here). The Worship of Mammon by Evelyn de Morgan, 1909. From super-hero to sub-zero, 2009

During the evening we had two sets of music from local musicians The Dulce Tones. They were also joined by the next generation, two local youngsters, for a rendition of The Pink Panther.

Then there was the presentation of the Ceausescue Golden Spoon Award to Mayors Jules Pipe and Boris Johnson (regretably in their absence) by Steve Butters of Capacities Ltd. Winning the most public votes for the least popular development, the Golden Spoon award recognises the overbearing presence of the authorities' bulldozed scheme, Dalston Square. Lord Low of Dalston, OPEN's Patron and local resident, also spoke briefly on behalf of OPEN Dalston members who were presented with a certificate in tribute to their inspirational campaign and vigorous opposition to historic Dalston's obliteration and aspects of its redevelopment (hear their speeches on the OPEN podcast here).

Another highlight of the event was Michael Rosen, broadcaster, poet and former national Children's Laureate, who performed "Regeneration Blues" accompanied by improvised music from The Dulce Tones. You can hear the performance on the OPEN podcast here. It will be broadcast by the BBC later this month. Look out for more poetry and jazz events in Dalston in the future.And finally, to round off the evening, the only bus stop which will be used on The Slab at New Dalston's £63million Transport Interchange, was sold by public auction. Local people heard how the cost of The Slab, to build The Bus Stop on, had risen from £26million to £39 million and is now estimated to cost £63million.

But there was little enthusiasm for the project amongst the auction bidders. The bus-stop was snapped up, for just £7.50, by a Clapton resident who happened to be walking home past the auction venue in Dalston. He heard the auctioneer, Michael Rosen, describe how the 488 route is to be extended from Clapton to Dalston Junction. The 488 is the only bus which will use the new £63million Transport Interchange which has been built on The Slab above the station.
"It'll be really handy for getting the train to Croydon" said the purchaser from Clapton, who preferred to remain anonymous, "but I do agree that a £63million Transport Interchange seems a lot for the public to pay just for my convenience".
(£7.50. It' s a start! Only another £62,999,992.50 to go to pay for The Slab. Ed)

Don't miss this OPEN public event at St Barnabas: 16th September at 7.30pm

2010-09-03T15:00:00.021+01:00

An OPEN public event will take place on Thursday 16 September beginning at 7.30pm in the evening. It will feature music, literature, history, satire and local news.

It will take place in Dalston at the St Barnabas Church and Hall, Shacklewell Row E8. Although partly in a church, the event is not religious and is open to people of all beliefs and none.

The church is Grade II* listed built in 1910 in the Romanesque style. A secret gem of a building and only now being brought back into full use .

David Garrard, from English Heritage, will give a short talk about the building and its history.

The writer, poet and film-maker Iain Sinclair will read from his new, yet to be published, book and may range freely across issues of local and national interest.

Michael Rosen, poet and broadcaster, will perform Regeneration Blues and other work - accompanied by The DulceTones ( Dalston musicians, including some of international repute and local notoriety).

OPEN’s Patron, Lord Low of Dalston and Lady Jill also hope to attend the event.

The building will be lit by Arcola Theatre - using a low carbon portable fuel cell - an invention of one of its Directors, Dr Ben Todd. Arcola will also present plans for their forthcoming move to The Colourworks in Ashwin Street, Dalston, and plans for an new carbon-neutral theatre in Dalston.

Another highlight of the evening will be to hear Steve Butters describe the fierce competition to win the Ceausescu Golden Spoon Award which has been won by the Dalston Square development - a public/private partnership scheme between Hackney Council, the Greater London Authority and volume house-builder Barratt. Phase2 of Dalston Square is now being built on The Slab.
A night time view of the City with The Slab in the foreground - a huge 1 hectre, three metres deep concrete raft spanning over the Dalston Junction station railway cutting. Photo © EXYZT

This architect's model shows Dalston Square completed.Phase 2 of the development at Dalston Junction is now under construction by Barratt and, like Phase 1, is being marketed for off-plan sales in the Far East.

The main cheerleaders, and financiers, of the Dalston Square scheme were the Mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe, and the ex-Mayor of the Greater London Authority, Ken Livingstone, who has since been replaced by Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson and Jules Pipe have both been invited to receive the award (although the presentation may have to proceed in their absence).

Boris Johnson who succeeded Ken Livingstone as Mayor of the Greater London Authority

The authorities argued that The Slab was necessary to build a bus/rail Transport Interchange above the station - but now TfL say that only one bus will in fact use it. The cost of the Slab has risen from £18m to £26m to £39m and is now estimated to cost £63 million. Following the presentation Michael Rosen will hold a public auction of Dalston's £63million Bus Stop.
Barratt Homes has now begun constructing Phase 2 of Dalston Square - a further nine blocks on The Slab, rising up to 20 storeys and comprising 330 flats. All for private sale. What will local people be prepared to bid for Dalston's £63millon Bus Stop? (Well... they wont be able to afford the flats. Ed.)

An artist's impression of Phase 2 of Dalston Square - 330 private flats and national brand stores. What the authorities' consultants, Drivers Jonas, described as a necessarily "high revenue generating scheme" to pay for The Slab.

Throughout the evening there will be opportunities for discussion, heckling and other forms of dissent.

Various items will be available to buy including the authors' books and a DVD “Save our Heritage” (a 35 minute film by Winstan Whittar documenting OPEN's battle to save Dalston 's Theatre and Georgian houses - now demolished)

The event is a fundraiser and there will be a £5.00 admission charge, £2.00 for unemployed, OAPs & students showing ID.

The Eastern Curve Garden. Can you dig it?

2010-08-10T22:46:00.075+01:00

Yes you can!

The recent story of the Eastern Curve spans 150 years. And now, once again, it is attracting a lot of attention as you can see here and here.

The Eastern Curve Garden and the pavilion - a new public space in the heart of Dalston

The Eastern Curve was where the old railway line from Dalston Junction station tunnelled under Dalston Lane in 1865 and joined up with the North London Overground line running east to Stratford.

A train arrives at Dalston Junction from Broad Street in 1865

But trains haven't clattered along the Eastern Curve in living memory. For decades it has been a forgotten wilderness where the kestrels nesting in St. Marks tower would forage for prey. The deserted building on the development site next door was discovered by a group of graffiti artists who created their contemporary frescos.

But, in more recent years, it had became a site for predation by fly-tippers, dealers and pimps. A land of dereliction and lost souls - with police reporting that people were sleeping in the tunnel and in the derelict, and now demolished, Ashwin Street houses which backed onto the land.

Then, last year, the Eastern Curve became the site for the temporary Dalston Mill designed and built by EXYZT along with a recreation of Agnes Denes' 1982 work; "Wheatfield - A Confrontation".

You can see more of the activities at the Dalston Mill here. photo © Exyzt

After these events, the mill was dismantled, the wheat dug up and taken to landfill and public access was gone. But not forgotten.

Since OPEN Dalston was first formed in 2004 we have campaigned for desperately needed public green space to be created in the centre of Dalston. With plans afoot to re-open the Eastern Curve we pressed,in alliance with other local associations, for community management of the space. Now, after months of planning, of negotiation with landowners and funders, of confidence building between partners, the vision is being realised. The Eastern Curve is becoming a haven for local people and for nature.

First came the excavations when a decade of fly-tipping was unearthed, sorted and the ground landscaped and laid out.

photo © Exyzt

Then work started on creating the pavilion, a covered wooden structure, to host events. Designed by EXYZT, this photo (above) shows some of the team of local people employed to build it.

Then came the planting and those involved revealed to others the wonders of the natural world. Here a local child helps Marie Murray, of OPEN Dalston, plant up herbs in boxes recycled from Ridley Road market.

photo © Exyzt

And now the Eastern Curve Garden is open to all. A place where people meet plants. A place for growth, creativity and solace amidst the hustle and bustle of Dalston Town centre's redevelopment.

The entrance is through the door at back of Dalston's Peace Mural Square. Don't miss out - just go to the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden to see what's happening.

Speak up! They're not listening.

2010-07-14T10:47:00.038+01:00

There are young people occupying the last surviving fragments of Dalston's Georgian houses. They know the sad history of our local heritage. They have something to say.

This year, after OPEN Dalston's long campaign, the Council finally bought the Dalston Lane houses back from the slum landlord which it sold them to at auction in 2002. But will the Council now carry on listening and responding to the local community?

The Council has started possession proceedings to evict the occupiers. The occupiers have offered the Council unrestricted access to carry out surveys and prepare refurbishment plans. But the Council has so far refused to let them stay until it's plans to restore the houses are ready to be implemented.

The occupiers are keeping the houses wind and watertight. They are protecting the houses which could otherwise be firebombed and vandalised, as happened previously to these 1807 houses at numbers 62-66 Dalston Lane.
Once empty the houses could then be left to decay until, like these, they had to be demolished by the Council at a further cost of £400,000 to the public purse.

And, if left empty, they could they be desecrated and vandalised like these 1825 houses in Dalston Lane.

You can read the Dalston Lane story here and here

The Council says it is the champion of our local heritage and responds to its commuities. We hope this time it will keep to its word.

It didn't last time

Dalston's Olympic bus stop may cost £63 million

2010-06-18T17:38:00.010+01:00

Last week we reported the uproar about the latest figures for the costs of Dalston's Olympic bus stop here.

You can see what Andrew Boff said in his TV interview, which caused the uproar, here (Clip2).

This is what it said in the London Development Agency's minutes dated 24.9.09 which Andrew Boff referred to:
"2.11 The podium slab works, undertaken by the East London Line Project, are currently running over the originally anticipated final cost of £39m due to engineering conflicts at the north end of the site between the East London line route and the safeguarded route for Cross Rail 2 (The proposed Chelsea/Hackney tube line - Ed). Our cost monitoring information shows that the anticipated final cost for the slab is likely to be £62.9m. The LDA's underwriting commitment towards the cost of the podium slab is capped at £19m, therefore the additional costs (£31.8m) of the slab will be covered by TfL".

On 27.4.10 TfL told Lord Low
"The final cost of the Dalston scheme is a commercial matter under discussion with our contractor. However I can confirm that the budget for the entire Dalston scheme is £39m. (Note 'budget' not actual cost - Ed) This figure includes the additional project management costs, the bus facility, the podium slab and railway costs resulting from the roofing over of the station."

So how much will the final bill be for Dalston's Olympic bus stop? And why did the estimates rise from £18m to £26m to £39m to £63m?And how much will it cost Hackney taxpayers?

Watch this space - the scandal which has emerged so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

Andrew Boff finds it. Jeanette Arnold loses it

2010-06-11T08:10:00.040+01:00

Andrew Boff, local resident and Conservative spokesman at the London Assembly on East London & the Olympics, has found minutes from September 2009 recording that the total cost of Dalston's Olympic bus stop could be £62.9 million, not £40million. £23 million over budget. See the minutes here -para 2.11.
He gave an ITV news interview on Wednesday and raised a question regarding the issue with Boris at GLA Mayor's question time yesterday. Also present was the Labour representative for Hackney and east London, Jeanette Arnold - a cheerleader for TfL's Dalston Olympic bus stop . She seemed to take it all a bit personally.

Jennette Arnold AM, former Chair of the London Assembly is pictured with Denis Oswald, Chair of the IOC Coordination Commission (left) and Sebastien Coe, Chair of the London Organising Committee.

You can watch the politicians discuss the issues on the GLA webcast here (scroll though to 01:47:00) but, in summary, it went something like this:
Boff: Can it possibly be true that The Slab in Dalston cost not only Dalston's heritage buildings but £62.9 million of public money? It says so in the LDA's minutes.
Boris: I will just read parrot fashion what I've been told to say. But £40million seems a lot to me for a concrete slab. I will ask questions of TfL today.
Arnold: The Dalston demolitions and The Slab are quite seperate. You're confusing my constituents... Bugger off Andrew...You can't tell me anything about Dalston Mr Boff. Go away! Go away!
Chair: Jeanette you're out of order. That's enough. Settle down please.

Ms Arnold suggests that The Slab had nothing to do with the demolition of Dalston's heritage buildings. But a letter from the GLA London Development Agency's Chief Executive, Manny Lewis, dated 29.11.06, to Lord Low (OPENs Patron) stated that, on the advice of it's architects ARUP (which designed the Barratt's tower blocks to replace them), "the buildings fronting Dalston Lane make very little contribution to the streetscape" and that "the provision of the over-station slab is reliant on a viable development scheme on the Dalston Lane site".

The LDA also wrote to the High Court judge to say The Slab scheme was in danger of collapse and urged him to lift OPEN's injunction which was preventing the demolitions.

The LDA repaid Hackney the cost of the demolitions.

This 1898 architect's drawing is of the entrance to Dalston's Theatre of Varieties, which was at 12 Dalston Lane. It was built in front of the original 1886 circus entrance ( the earliest surviving example in the UK - designed by Alfred Brandreth). An urban gem. These buildings were described by the LDA's Chief Executive, as "making very little contribution to the streetscape". Shortly afterwards the buildings were demolished.

Four slow deaths on Ashwin Street. And a burial.

2010-06-03T22:16:00.029+01:00

As we reported last week, after decades of squatting and then dereliction, Hackney are now hell bent on demolishing rather than retaining anything of its four charming old houses at 2-8 Ashwin Street.

This is how the facades of 2-8 Ashwin Street looked in 2003, after 20 years of Hackney ownership.

Following extensive public consultation last summer, in which OPEN led a detailed community response, Hackney's draft Dalston Area Action Plan acknowledged the importance of the old houses to the Ashwin Street Character Area.

This is what the Plan says:
Development at 2 – 8 Ashwin Street: Any redevelopment and/or refurbishment of Nos. 2 – 8 Ashwin Street is encouraged to consider the retention of the existing buildings and/or existing building façade. However, if full or partial retention is not viable, and is clearly demonstrated that demolition is the only practicable option, its removal will be considered as part of any proposals to develop the properties for a landmark exemplar building that will contribute positively to the character of Ashwin Street and Dalston Park.

So why is demolition proceeding now? Particularly when it is not part of any proposal for a "landmark exemplar building" to replace the old houses?

This is how 2-8 Ashwin Street looked today with demolition well under way

OPEN has now heard back from Hackney's solicitor who informs that the decision to demolish was made by it's Chief Executive "to maintain public safety" following "police reports". The houses have fallen into a dangerous condition.

We have also received a copy of Hackney's recent structural engineer's report following an external inspection. His report commented on distortion to the front walls of the houses, worsened by fire damage, and that "to ascertain the exact extent of wall sections worth retaining, would require a full... survey". But, it appears, no such full survey was undertaken. Hackney has refused OPEN's specialist engineer access to provide a second opinion. Hackney are proceeding to demolish the lot.

Ashwin Street on the morning when Number 8 was gutted by fire on 31.7.08 . The facades of the old houses frame the view of the locally listed Reeves Printhouse.

Where a building has become unsafe due to dereliction there is an exception to an owner's right to demolish. It is designed to prevent the mischief of owners using their own neglect or vandalism as an excuse to demolish residential houses without planning control. In those cases the owner must apply for full planning permission - unless it can show the building can not practicably be made safe or temporarily supported.

In the present case there already is shoring supporting the houses. And Hackney's engineer has described what would be needed to retain part and rebuild the remainder of the houses' facades. But no advice was given about what is needed to make the houses safe. But, despite ignoring that requirement, Hackney claim there is no need to apply for planning permission to demolish them.

2 Ashwin Street today, half demolished, with a glimpse of the Dalston Lane Peace Mural in the background.

Regular readers of this blog may now be experiencing of sense of deja vu. When Hackney sought to justify demolition of Dalston's circus buildings and locally listed Georgian houses in 2005 it also referred to fires (whereas there had been none), that its surveyors had inspected all the buildings (which they had not), that they were all beyond repair (which they were not) and that they did not need planning permission to demolish them (but a High Court Judge agreed with OPEN that they did).

But then Hackney went on to grant itself planning permission and destroyed them anyway. And now Ashwin Street follows on.

If you believe what Hackney says of itself ("We are the champions of the historic environment") then why is Building Design magazine this week publishing accusations by national and local amenity societies of Hackney's "cultural vandalism" ?

The former site of Dalston's Circus and Georgian houses destroyed by Hackney Council with the approval and agreement of Transport for London, the London Development Agency, the Greater London Authority and the Secretary of State, to fund Dalston's £40million bus stop.

The Vandals: an eastern Germanic tribe which earned notoriety by sacking Rome in the 5th century but which was defeated by the Goths.
Vandalism: the gratuitous anti-social destruction of the environment and artistic creations.
Municipal vandalism: the destruction of our cultural heritage by corporate ignorance, deliberate neglect, vanity and greed all in the name of progress.

How did it happen?
Read the posting "The story that was never told" for a more detailed history.

Boris is coming! Quick!! Demolish Old Dalston

2010-05-26T19:32:00.031+01:00

OPEN has learned from demolition contractors on site that four old houses at 2- 8 Ashwin Street must be pulled down and levelled by 5th June because Boris is coming.

2 Ashwin Street - the ninth "opportunity site" to burn down in Dalston in recent years. A squatter threw himself from an upper floor, during the fire on 31.7.08, with tragic consequences.

Hackney has owned the terrace of charming old houses since the 1980s. But it has never maintained or repaired them. It says that their condition has now become so dangerous they must be demolished immediately. There is no time to even consult the public or get planning permission to demolish them.

So the timing of the demolitions, by 5th June, is apparently nothing to do with the Council's "Dalston Connected" street party on Sunday 6th June to take place in Ashwin Street. This PR event is to celebrate the Dalston Junction overground station re-opening and Dalston's new £40million Olympic bus stop. Boris is to be the guest of honour.

2-8 Ashwin Street front walls were shored up after the fire, to stablise them, over 12 months ago. But the rear walls got no such protection.

In the Council's various public consultations since 2005 onwards our community has expressed a clear preference for re-use of the historic Ashwin Street old houses. Re-use is sustainable and would preserve the human scale and character of Dalston.

OPEN, Arcola Theatre and other community groups sent a deputation to Hackney's Mayor, Jules Pipe, on 26th October 2009. His Cabinet agreed "to defer demolition subject to further survey and discussion with interested parties, to determine the feasibility of retention". But there's been no such discussion and Hackney has refused to supply the survey report.

But at the same Cabinet meeting, OPEN has discovered, the Cabinet also agreed "that the Council lets the contract for the demolition to Clifford Devlin for the sum of £170K".

And over the same period the Council has also been buying up other sites in Ashwin Street, one at over market value, for redevelopment "as a natural progession of the Dalston Square development to the south" .

Looking north at 2-8 Ashwin Street and Barratt's Dalston Square towerblocks under construction

OPEN solicitors have written to the Council demanding to know why the buildings suddenly have to be demolished by 5th June and why no planning application is first to be made and the public consulted.

We are grateful for the research assistance of Loving Dalston, the independent Hackney news site.

A satirical image

2010-05-20T09:24:00.004+01:00

This satirical image showing Lord Low and Lord Coe, with Phase 1 of Dalston's tower blocks under construction in the background, has been circulating in the public domain in Hackney for quite some time now.

(Click on image to enlarge)

In view of the emerging scandal of Dalston's £40million Olympic bus stop OPEN would like to take this opportunity to correct some of the glaring inaccuracies this image contains.

Just for starters. Lord Low of Dalston's job is NOT to represent Dalston - he is a cross bench "people's peer" who sits in the House of Lords for the greater good.

And secondly, for the record, Lord Coe DID come first (two Olympic Gold Medals in fact when he was just humble Seb Coe).

If you wish to point out any other inaccuracies please add them as Comments below. It's (still) free. Ed

Lord Low condemns the authorities' gross extravagance

2010-05-13T12:34:00.044+01:00

Readers of this blog will recall last week that OPEN revealed the scandal of Dalston's £40million bus stop. The scandal hit the front page and this week The 'Agony's editorial, entitled "A slab in the face" (!!), reports that there is "understandable outrage from many Dalston residents".

That sense of outrage is palpable. It hangs like a black cloud over Dalston, along with the smoke of nine development sites that have burnt down in Dalston recently. But the outrage isn't because we wanted to see more buses terminating at TfL's Transport Interchange. OPEN had objected to the whole scheme from the beginning. And in 2006 we told the authorities that building The Slab was "not a prudent use of financial and natural resources" and that, if they went ahead, it would be "The most expensive bus stand in history".

In February 2007 OPEN's Patron, Lord Low of Dalston, alluded to the pending scandal when making his maiden speech in the House of Lords.

Colin Low, CBE, is Lord Low of Dalston, Vice-President of the Royal National Institute for the Blind and President of the European Blind Union. He lives in Dalston

But the authorities pursued their reckless Slab scheme and Lord Low went into further detail in a later speech in the Lords which you can read here.

Lord Low has written to the local paper's Editor this week to explain OPEN's position further regarding The Slab. This is what he wrote:

Colin Low, Lord Low of Dalston, CBE

The Editor

Hackney Gazette 15th May, 2010

Dear Sir

With reference to the lead story in your issue of 6 May and last week’s editorial, you highlight the fact that the use by just one bus route of Dalston's new £40million Transport Interchange is a great disappointment to the residents of Dalston and an appalling waste of public money. But this rather misses the point. Having more buses using this so-called transport interchange (which by the way links only with the Overground and not the tube), breaking their journeys there and putting passengers to unnecessary inconvenience and possibly expense, is not what Dalston wants. OPEN, of which I am Patron, has never advocated or wished for this as you suggest. Indeed we vigorously opposed the whole development from the outset. Having more buses now use the interchange in the manner you suggest would only make it worse.

TfL originally claimed that the "Transport Interchange" was essential for its bus operations and that there was "no alternative location" except to build it on a £40million concrete slab over the new Dalston Junction station. To fund this,they said, "high revenue generating forms of development" were essential. That is why Barratt will be building 9 further tower blocks of up to 20 storeys, all for sale but with no affordable housing, crammed onto the slab. Despite Hackney itself acknowledging that the designs were "austere" and below its own design standards, it granted TfL planning permission.

TfL told OPEN at the time that its scheme would not affect the use of the neighbouring Hackney site. This was untrue. We later learned that, because of the outstanding £18million deficit for funding the slab, TfL also required Hackney to demolish Dalston's historic buildings and dispose of the land as a development site to Barratt. Hackney succumbed to this pressure and agreed a deal which was so unfavourable to its taxpayers that it had to get government approval to dispose of its public land at undervalue. All Hackney got in return was a peppercorn rent and four floors to fit out as a library which they were obliged to rent from Barratt.

Had the authorities been willing to seriously consider the more modest alternative scheme promoted by Dalston's Bootstraps Company and OPEN, we could now be seeing a scheme with 100 % affordable housing, independent shops and new businesses in affordable commercial units, community facilities and Dalston's historic buildings preserved and converted. And Hackney could have retained much of its land value.

The government also contributed £10million to help fund the slab. It said the "Transport Interchange" was essential for the 2012 Olympics. But none of the buses or trains using the "Interchange" go there. Perhaps TfL may yet use the slab for hopper buses to take people from the station to the Olympic site. But this was never presented as a justification for the slab at the time and £40million will seem a grossly extravagant subsidy for a 6 week event, especially to the people of Dalston.

Yours faithfully

Colin Low

(Lord Low of Dalston)

The scandal of Dalston's £40million Olympic bus stop

2010-04-29T15:53:00.031+01:00

Whilst politicians have recently been scrambling to take credit for the reopening of the East London overground railway to Dalston Junction they have, unsuprisingly, been silent about the scandal of Dalston Square’s £40million bus stop.

Dalston's £40million Slab over the new station which has been built for a planned bus/rail Transport Interchange.There are 9 more tower blocks to be built on the site to sell and pay for The Slab.

Despite the public outcry, Dalston’s heritage buildings have been demolished, and its environment is now to be blighted by nine further blocks of flats of up to 20-storeys, all for sale (with no affordable housing) to pay for The Slab .

The Slab is a £40million concrete raft over the railway cutting which, we were told, was essential to create a bus/rail Transport Interchange to support the 2012 Olympic bid. And regenerate Dalston.

The new barbarism - the authorities vision for Dalston's future "regeneration"

But now we have learned, from TfLs replies to Lord Low of Dalston and OPENs Freedom of Information Act requests, that only one bus will use The Slab - the 488 , the route of which is to be extended from Clapton to Dalston. There are no plans for London Buses to use the Slab for other bus routes terminating in Dalston and as for through route buses, they say, diverting them to use The Slab would just delay passengers. (Shouldn't they have thought of that before? Ed.)

So there we have it - the destruction of old Dalston’s Town Centre was to finance a £40million Olympic Transport Interchange for use by just one bus that doesn’t even go to the Olympic site (and neither does the train).

With schemes of such monumental environmental and financial extravagance, and pointlessness, no wonder our government is bankrupt and the electorate disenchanted. But how could the public have been so mislead? In a culture of official deception just remember that old adage “Don’t believe anything in politics until it's been officially denied”.

PS TfL have also said that having the Transport Interchange means bus drivers won’t have to go all the way back to the garage to get a cup of tea. So there’s a comfort.

Barratt to complete Dalston Square

2010-02-25T10:09:00.102Z

Barratt are reported to be about to start the second half (the west side) of the Dalston Square development this month. Ken Livingstone's London Development Agency obtained permission for the scheme in March 2006 despite community objections and a Hackney report to it's Planning Committee describing the design as "harsh" and "austere". The development - a row of 9 private residential blocks and shops, of up to 20 storeys, with no affordable housing - will be built on The Slab, a massive concrete raft over TfL's Dalston Junction railway cutting.

The Slab, costing over £40 million, has been completed. The development includes Transport for London's "transport interchange" which will serve the reinstated East London Line station and the new bus turnaround behind it. The design of the station's entrance is not to everyone's taste .

In the depths of the credit freeze there were doubts whether Barratt could proceed. It has sustained eyewatering losses approaching £800 million over 2 years. Like all volume house builders it has been pleading with bankers to relax mortgage restrictions which have been affecting new-build sales and freezing out first time buyers who can't raise the 20% deposits bankers are demanding.

With assistance from government bail out schemes, like HomeBuy Direct which helped first time buyers bridge the funding gap, 'Too Big to Fail' Barratt were able to advertise "half-price" deals on some of the Dalston Square flats.

Debt-laden Barratt's financial problems have been relieved by favourable conditions for absentee landlords. Recent reports have described how two-thirds of the 5,500 new houses and flats sold in London during the first three quarters of 2009 were purchased as buy-to-let properties. Reports last summer described 'buy to let' marketing of Dalston Square in the far east and the announcements of Phase 1 'selling extremely well' have been talked up by 'massive interest from Far Eastern buyers'. OPEN's concern is the creation of a transient population on shorthold tenancies, which does not create sustainable balanced communities with a commitment to the area.

Nearing completion - the east side of Barratt's Dalston Square - a development of 230 flats, shop units and a 3-floor shell for a new public library - is on the Hackney Council demolition site of the former 1886 Dalston Theatre, Georgian listed houses, and what was the oldest circus entrance in the country. The historic buildings were demolished in 2007, despite vigorous community opposition, to create a valuable development site which Hackney Council traded to subsisdise The Slab.

A birds eye view of the authorities' 2006 vision for Dalston. In the foreground are the 9 blocks, which are now to be built above the railway cutting, and the ramp for the 80 buses per hour planned to emerge into the traffic of Kingsland Road and head north.

More tall storeys. This is the computer graphic used to promote Dalston Square - which some have predicted will be a sunless windswept canyon due to its north/south orientation and the accelerated windspeeds and micro-climates which the tall buildings are predicted to generate.

This is the authorities' image of Dalston Square, west side, which is about to be started (with graphic additions by an unknown local artist). But will Dalston Square attract the brand name shops which, the authorities said, the scheme's viability and Dalston's 'regeneration' depended upon? Not, it would seem, while the nation's ghost town high streets are being replicated in Dalston.

Dalston Square's completion will be proceeding amidst fears of a 'double dip' recession. Government money for more bail outs is drying up. Even with housebuilders restricting supply to maintain house prices Barratt's own predictions are of a seven year road to a recovery in its fortunes. There will clearly be pressure to downgrade the quality of what is to be built, as some local residents have seen elsewhere.

Nearly four years ago OPEN published "Save our past. Save our future". We predicted Dalston Square could become a buy-to-let opportunity for absentee landlords and become the slums of the future. Elsewhere similar schemes have been rejected. Perhaps these battles are what have prompted Barratt's opposition to popular localism policies. But Dalston Square's cheerleader, Hackney's Mayor Pipe, called the critics the "Keep Hackney Crap Brigade". Although Barratt is one of the 'preferred delivery partners' of the Homes and Communities Agency (which finances social housing) a review by the government's design quango CABE had found much of the publicly funded schemes built were unfit for purpose. But which major housebuilders were churning out rabbit hutches during the boom years is a state secret! Now we are bust can we expect the standards of new-build like Dalston Square to be any better?

GLA to withhold Bishops Place information

2010-01-29T17:23:00.051Z

Last week OPEN was told that the Secretary of State's reasons for allowing the Bishops Place development were confidential and that the balance of the public interest favours non-disclosure".

Now, Boris's Greater London Authority tells us it is following that lead.

OPEN has been told by the GLA that information leading to it approving the Bishops Place scheme is "commercially confidential" and " may need to be withheld...".

The confidential information is, we believe, the 'financial viability assessment', which the developer Hammerson gave the GLA on condition it would never be publically revealed, and which sought to justify an £11 million deduction in its contribution to off-site affordable housing.

And, because it takes a long time time to remove all that information from the documents, "...it will be necessary to extend the time limit to respond" the GLA says.

Our request was sent on 22 December and the time limit for providing the information would normally be 11 January (20 days). But the GLA says the limited information which they will allow us to see may now not be provided before 1 March - just 4 days before the time limit expires to challange the GLA's decision to approve the Bishops Place scheme. How convenient. For the GLA. And for Hackney. And for the developer Hammerson.

What are the secrets of the Bishops Place planning decisions? There was certainly a lot of money involved - a £500 million private scheme, on a site mainly owned by Hackney Council, which was also the authority which granted planning permission, after the resignation of Hackney's former Head of Planning and after the developer had first vetted the Council report which went to the Planning Committee. Plus the promise of a £3.1 million payment for the GLA towards Crossrail into the bargain.

After a long battle against the local residential and business community, after an historic building was saved, after family homes and £11 million for affordable housing in Dalston had been lost, now darkness decends as the reasons for the authorities' approvals are removed from the public's view.

If Hammerson can raise the money to start building the 52-storey Bishops Place, before its planning permission lapses in 5 years, then Mammon will have secured its first major foothold in Shoreditch. It's attention will now move on to the other development sites locally which it, and the City Corporation, have spent years assembling.

Click on image to enlarge it

OPEN draws a blank

2010-01-22T11:28:00.019Z

OPEN Dalston's appeal to the Secretary of State has been rejected for reasons which, we are told, "the balance of the public interest favours non-disclosure".

We had appealed to the Secretary of State against the approval of Hammerson's Bishops Place planning application where it appeared that the authorities had abandoned their affordable housing and other policies. Hackney had granted planning permission for this £500million, 51-storey, tombstone scheme in Shoreditch. And agreed to reduce the developers contribution towards 'off-site' affordable housing from £14million to £3million.

Hackney intended to take the 'off-site' money from Shoreditch and spend it in Dalston, thus robbing Peter to pay Paul. It would spend it on The Slab - the GLA's half of Dalston Square scheme - where, embarrassingly, there is so far to be no affordable housing at all.

Following OPEN's appeal a reply was received from the Government's Office for London stating that "the application does not raise issues of more than local importance" and that the Secretary of State, Rt Hon. John Denham MP, would not intervene.

But how could a scheme that appears to depart from national planning policies PPG 1, PPS3 & PPG 15 - regarding appropriate design, protection of the the historic environment, meeting housing need and transparency - be justified? " What are the reasons?" we asked. The government replied by forwarding us its appraisal of the scheme on which it commented thus:
"A small section of the case appraisal has been redacted (removed, concealed) The redactions are of the recommendations as to whether a case should be called in for public inquiry and the decision of the Secretary of State. We consider this advice and recommendations to be of a policy nature and subject to a qualified exemption..This is to allow free and frank thinking and consideration between officials and Ministers. Therefore, we consider that the balance of the public interest favours non-disclosure....Government Office aims to be as helpful as possible..."

OPEN Dalston had drawn a blank. The answers to OPEN's question, to be found in the government's appraisal, had been removed from public view. Apparently the officials' policy recommendations, and the Minister's reasons for his decision, are confidential internal communications. In the "public interest" they can be withheld from the public. So, no "free and frank thinking" will be permitted for the public then.

Fortunately the BBC picked up the story from OPEN's blogs. It scrutinised all the documentation available, canvassed the authorities opinions, and then published the story here.

The BBC, as well as OPEN, have asked for a review of the secrecy decision. We've been told it will be undertaken by a separate government department.

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me..........

2009-12-17T21:40:00.118Z

Twelve legends dining
This image shows some of the stars who were associated with the now demolished 1886 Dalston Theatre buildings. They include Sir Robert Fossett (circus owner), Marie Lloyd (international music hall star), Stevie Wonder, Desmond Decker, Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols and The Prodigy. You can read the story that was never told here. Hackney Council demolished the historic buildings in 2007 to make way for New Dalston's tower blocks, brand name shops and a £40 million bus station on The Slab, which are now under construction.

Eleven pipers piping Having agreed to the GLAs demands that it help finance The Slab, and with road closures and 20 more of Dalston's buildings demolished to renew the train tunnel leading to Highbury, this year Members of Mayor Pipe's Cabinet approved the purchase of two development sites on the north side of Dalston Lane, in Ashwin street, as a "natural progession of the Dalston Square development". Following lobbying by OPEN Dalston and others, the Mayor's Cabinet has agreed to a survey of the Ashwin Street houses to see if, despite decades of neglect, they are fit for refurbishment. Perhaps Ashwin Street will become part of Dalston's cultural hub.

Ten floors and risingThe Worship of Mammon 1909 by Evelyn de Morgan, updated 2009 by dunkdigital.com
There were worries that Barratt's development of 10 to 20 storey residential towers on Hackney Council's Dalston Square site, where Dalston's historic buildings once stood, would be left as concrete stumps. Like all developers it had been hit hard by the credit freeze. With increased government subsidy, buy-to-let sales abroad and drip feeding the market, debt laden Barratt clung on and survived the year despite all the bad news. But there's no sign yet of a start on Phase 2 - further 10-20 storey towers on The Slab above TfL's Dalston Junction station - which was supposed to start last October.

Nine members voting 70 family homes and an £11million contribution towards affordable housing, intended for Dalston, are what desperate for cash Hackney Council gave up in its rush to grant planning permission for a 52-storey development in Shoreditch. Mega-developer Hammerson had agreed to buy Hackney's Shoreditch site for millions if it could build Foster designed tombstone scheme on it. Boris' GLA and New Labour's Secretary of State all agreed to ditch their affordable and family homes policies when approving Hackney's decision. Ads have since appeared for empty homes up north to help Hackney's 20,000 overcrowded and homeless off the Council's waiting list and on their way.

Eight years of fightingSpirit's eight year fight for justice had a further set back when a county court judge dismissed his claim for compensation against Hackney after it had sold his shop at auction in 2001 to an absentee landlord for less than Spirit had offered to pay."He was plainly proud of the business which he had built up since 1993. It is sad that this was taken from him "said the Judge "It is unfortunate that these offshore companies are purchasing properties and are able to avoid the same fees and taxes which others would have to pay". Last November we saw Court Bailiffs abandon plans to take possession of Spirit's home and shop after a rally of local people gathered on Broadway Market to show their support for one of the street's best loved characters. Shortly afterwards, to avoid confrontation, Spirit gave up his keys to his landlord. Spirit has lodged an appeal against the Court's judgment.

Seven blackened buildingsIn previous years they would burn down old buildings on Dalston's development sites, but this year they painted them black. A somber reminder of charred remains.... or a dark vision of more funeral pyres to come? Banksey's street art in Hackney shared a similar fate. The authorities developed the redaction technique further to deal with public interest in MPs expense sheets.

Six heart breakers

Five gold rings

In October OPEN learned of the extensive radioactive contamination uncovered across the London Olympic 2012 site during 2.5 million cu. metres of earthmoving and landscaping works. The regulatory authorities - the Environment Agency and local Council's - have left it to the Olympic Delivery Authority to manage the risks by means of planning permission conditions But extensive stockpiling and burials of radioactive materials have been carried out without any planning permission at all. OPEN called for an independent report - and the expert's conclusions now received are shocking. We hope that all will be revealed this forthcoming year.

Four Aces Club Winstan's Whitter's documentary "Legacy in the dust" tells the story of Dalston's legendary reggae club, its relationship with the Council and the police, how it went on to become the Labyrinth and the eventual demolition of its home in Dalston's historic buildings. You can hear Winstan talk about the history on Hackney Podcast. The film was most recently shown as part of the events at the Dalston Mill. Newton Dunbar's Four Aces Club was revisited in a recent press review.

Three charges dropped
Hackney Council announced, following government intervention, that it was dropping the outstanding prosecutions of Ridley Market stallholder Janet Devers for selling in pounds and ounces and by the bowl. Janet, with other metric martyrs, is now petitioning for a pardon following convictions for earlier offenses. Ridley Road traders are still fighting for survival in the depths of recession. But Hackney have now restored lighting to the stalls and approved the traders proposals for market refurbishment which they hope will start before next spring. Watch the video - Neneh Cherry and Andi Oliver buy some bunches of callaloo from Janet in Ridley Road Market, the home of the bargain (and lets keep it that way)!

Two writers speak

“On Dalston Lane time itself seems to lie around in broken fragments....” was the title of an OPEN event in March when, despite being banned from speaking on Council premises, Iain Sinclair joined cultural historian and writer Patrick Wright to speak to a packed house at Cafe Oto. We were also honoured to have Lord Low of Dalston, Chairman of the RNIB and OPEN's patron, address us. The evening included 1969 Hackney film footage from Iain's archives and you can see his latest Guardian film here which describes Dalston and Hackney as its was and how it has become. The intrepid journalists of Hackney Citizen and Games Moniter meanwhile uncovered evidence of political censorship with Orwellian implications. The quirky Dalston Lane terrace, which Patrick Wright wrote of in his republished novel, now lies in ruins.

And a retail opportunity Image gimped by sdit.org.uk
OPEN Dalston consulted the local community about Hackney's proposals for a massive residential/retail led 8-storey redevelopment of Dalston Cross shopping centre. But although the credit freeze poured cold water on Hackney's aspirations, Tesco progressed its plans for twin 12-storey residential towers on top of a new redeveloped Tesco superstore in Morning Lane which will overshadow St John in Hackney churchyard gardens and Hackney's oldest monument, St Augustine's tower.

"....The latest blocks, blindly monolithic, devour pavements and abolish bus stops. They aspire to an occult geometry of capital: Queensbridge Quarter, Dalston Square. Everything is contained, separate, protected from flow and drift. No junk mail, please. No doorstep hawkers. No doorsteps. The big idea is to build in-station car parks, to control ‘pedestrian permeability’, so that clients of the transport system exit directly into a shopping mall. Where possible, a supermarket operator underwrites the whole development, erecting towers on site, so that Hackney becomes a suburb of Tesco, with streets, permanently under cosmetic revision, replaced by 24-hour aisles. Light and weather you can control. Behaviour is monitored by a discreet surveillance technology"
Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books, June 2009

An artists impression of Phase 2 of TfLs Dalston Square development - flats for sale, brand name shops and no affordable housing planned. And all to pay for somewhere Tfl can turn its buses around - on The Slab .

OPEN Dalston appeals to the Secretary of State

2009-11-24T16:08:00.033Z

OPEN Dalston has written to the Secretary of State appealing against a huge cut in family homes and an £11million cut in a developers contribution to affordable housing planned for Dalston. Hackney Council agreed to the cuts when it granted planning permission for developer, Hammerson's, Bishops Place scheme on 4.11.09. The government has the power to call in and overule the decision.

Hammerson's £400million Bishops Place scheme in Shoreditch will have four towers of up to 52 storeys, 88,000 square metres of offices, a hotel and 240 flats

The application is presently being considered by the Greater London Authority (GLA), which also has power to overule the decision. But Hackney reported that the GLA had already approved the £11million cut in affordable housing which was linked, Hackney said, to Hammerson's agreement to pay the GLA £3.1million towards the London Mayor's Crossrail scheme.

The design of Hammerson's scheme by Foster and Partners has been condemned as "fundamentally flawed" by the government's design advisers, CABE, but its objections were not seen by Hackney's Planning Committee.

Desperate for cash Hackney Council owns most of the development site and stands to make tens of £millions under an option agreement to sell the site to Hammerson with the benefit of planning permission.The scheme first attracted controversy when Hackney recommended that its Planning Committee grant Hammerson permission to completely demolish The Light.

Artist Lucinda Rogers

The Light, an historic building at 233 Shoreditch High Street, which stands as a landmark on the border between the City and Shoreditch. Hackney have now approved the demolition of the rear part of the building.

In the face of community opposition the Committee deferred its decision on 24.7.08. Hackney then had to include The Light in the Shoreditch Conservation Area when the Secretary of State and English Heritage intervened at OPEN Shoreditch's request. Normally they would not intervene unless it appeared that a local authority's decision was being influenced by a conflict of interest.

Photograph by Mike Wells
The Slab above Transport for London's new station at Dalston Junction . The Slab has already had over £40million of public subsidy, and tower blocks of up to 20-storeys are to be built to pay for it - but there was no affordable housing planned at all.

Hammerson's original planning application for Bishops Place included 100 family size flats and it also offered to make a contribution of £14million to "off-site" affordable housing which the Council said it would spend on The Slab development in Dalston.
Hammerson amended its scheme which came back before Hackney's Planning Committee on 4.11.09. Hackney and the GLA usually look for up to 40% family homes on major schemes like this. But now Hammerson proposed to reduce the number of family homes from 100 to 33 (14%). Hammerson said there just wasn't enough open amenity space available to suit families. but Hammerson's planning application failed to include extensive neighbouring land which it owns, although its presentation to the Planning Committee showed that land also as developed . English Heritage objected to the Bishops Place scheme, criticising its "overbearing presence" and its "harmful impact on surrounding conservation areas and listed buildings". CABE said the scale of some buildings were "manifestly unsuited to their context"

And, although in August 2006 Hammerson had written to Hackney suggesting that 112 affordable flats (30%) on the site would be possible, it now proposed just 50, with only 11 for social rent. And it also dropped its contribution to "off site" affordable housing from £14million down to £3million because of market conditions. Hackney agreed to these cuts when granting planning permission on 4.11.09. However the Secretary of State has recently ruled, in a seperate case, that temporary economic difficulties do not justify abandoning affordable housing policies on major schemes.

Hackney's grant of planning permission was supported by the City which has several joint venture agreements with Hammerson for office developments in Shoreditch

OPEN Shoreditch has complained to the Standards Board, which regulates local authorities' conduct, that Hackney had a prejudicial conflict of interest when it rushed the poorly designed scheme through. Hackney's report to its Planning Committee members highlighted that it owned the development site and that it had an option agreement to sell the site to Hammerson. But committee members were not also advised that the £millions the Council would get from the sale if granting permission was not a planning consideration and that they should not allow it to influence their decision.

In 2007 Hackney earmarked the proceeds of sale from the development site to meet the costs of the new Town Hall annex which is now under construction. Soon people will be able to go these new offices to pay their Council tax. Meanwhile there are some 12,000 homeless and overcrowded applicants on the Council's housing waiting list and Hackney has described the shortage of family homes as "most acute".

Authorities abandon affordable housing policies.

2009-11-07T16:17:00.025Z

On 4th November Hackney Council agreed to give up an £11million payment intended for affordable housing in Dalston, when it granted planning permission for Hammerson's 52-storey Bishops Place tower block development in Shoreditch.

The Bishops Place tombstone development designed by Foster and Partners. The City of London Corporation, which has several joint venture agreements with Hammerson on sites in Shoreditch, welcomed the scheme

In the face of community opposition Hackney had deferred the planning application in July 2008 and asked Hammerson to spare The Light at 233 Shoreditch High Street which was to be demolished. At that time Hammerson said there was room for only 50 affordable flats in its £400 million, 1.5 million sq ft., scheme. It offered to contribute £14 million to "off-site" affordable housing. The contribution was intended for TfL's Dalston Junction development, which has already received massive public subsidy, but where there is presently no affordable housing planned at all.

The Slab, a £40million concrete raft over the railway cutting, intended to provide a bus station and private flats in 8 blocks of up to 20 storeys at Dalston Junction.

Hackney's, and the Mayor of London's, policy is that in larger schemes developers should seek to provide 50% affordable housing of which 70% should be for social rental and 30% for shared-ownership. Hammerson's mixed-use scheme includes 290 flats and serviced hotel apartments but there are to be only 11 flats (4%) for social rental.

The Worship of Mammon, 1909 by Evelyn de Morgan, updated 2009 by dunkdigital.com

Hackney accepted that the international property developer, Hammerson, had been hit by the credit feeze , which meant that it could now only afford a £3million, and not a £14million, contribution to off-site affordable housing. But Hackney also extended the time to start the development to 5 years when it hopes that market conditions will have improved.
The Bishops Place scheme, which still involves partial demolition of The Light, has been condemned by the Government's advisory commission, CABE, which objected to the "fundamentally flawed" design and the "canyon effect" of the blocks. But the rushed consultation process meant that CABE's objections were not made available for Planning Committee members to read.
English Heritage advised that the "overbearing" development would have "a harmful impact on surrounding conservation areas and listed buildings". But English Heritage's letter was not on the planning file either.
The Council did not even consult it's own Design Review Panel which has objected strongly to the previous designs.

Hackney Council owns most of the Bishops Place site and will make £millions, under an option deal with the developer Hammerson, now the scheme has been granted planning permission. But the sale proceeds wont be spent on affordable housing or other community benefits in either Shoreditch or Dalston because they are earmarked to pay for Hackney's new annex to its Town Hall which, its Mayor hopes, will give Hackney citizens "a sense of civic pride".
The Bishops Place scheme will now be reviewed by the Mayor of London's office. Hammerson has promised Mayor Boris £3.1 million to help pay for Crossrail and Hackney report that his office has already approved the affordable housing arrangements.

Ashwin Street holds its breath.....

2009-10-24T22:41:00.033+01:00

On Monday 26th October Hackney Council's Cabinet agreed to await a structural engineers report on the condition of 2-8 Ashwin Street before deciding whether to demolish the houses.
Over the summer the public were being consulted about how the Dalston Masterplan should retain the best of our local character. Options for the Ashwin Street houses included providing a new home for Arcola Theatre .
ONn 30 July 2009 the Council's Property Services obtained agreement, from the Council's Planning Department, that if the Ashwin Street houses were to be demolished planning permission would not be necessary.
Members of OPEN Dalston objected to the demolitions without further investigation. We asked for an independent survey of the houses before irreversible decisions were made. The Council's Cabinet listened and agreed to this request last Monday. Meanwhile Ashwin Street holds its breath.

Ridley Road market plans - make your views known

2009-10-13T09:40:00.007+01:00

The Council is consulting the public on how to spend over £1million on improving Ridley Road Market. Three options have been offered - the third option being the one developed in consultation with the Ridley Road traders themselves. You can see the plans here and you have until 16th October to make your views known via email to streetscene@hackney.gov.uk

This latest round of consultation is part of a lengthy process which began with the Council obtaining a consultants' report back in 2007. Their recommendations covered most of the issues which are now part of the Council's consultation.

The consultants noted that traders are charged £430,000 a year for waste management but found "the worst market environment we have ever experienced in over 30 years".

The consultants' recommendations included a profit-led approach to market management so that the Council could obtain income by increasing the charges trader's pay for licensing, storage, electricity and parking. Ridley Market is presently the "Home of the Bargain" and, for many, a vital source of affordable goods and fresh produce. Increased charges to traders would inevitably lead to higher prices for customers. The consultants also suggested cashing in on Council assets, particularly the market storage land in Birkbeck Road, by identifying "potential disposal opportunities... of land for residential development".

Ridley Road's market traders are at the hub of Dalston's retail diversity, and its vitality, so why have they had so much grief? One of the first of the consultants' recommendations to be implemented was a crack down on traders by a restructured Council enforcement team. Since 2007 OPEN has reported on the prosecutions of traders (which were later declared by government to be"not in the public interest") rumours of a Council agenda to redevelop some of the market's land (strongly denied by Hackney's Mayor Pipe), electricity supplies to traders stalls cut off since May 2007, the sudden closure of the traders' market store and traders' appeals against revocation of their licences.

Larry Julian, Chair of the RRMTA, talks about the improvement plans

The Ridley Road Market Traders Association (RRMTA) has been consulted and it supports many of the Council's improvement proposals - refurbished lighting and electricity supplies, road and pavement upgrades, better publicity and gateway signage, improved waste collection and recycling and equal size but larger stalls. The RRMTA particularly favours improving the St Marks (east) end of Ridley Road market, part of which is on private land, and encouraging people to shop along its entire length.

But the Options the Council present make no express mention of refurbishing the market's store that was closed last year (although some work is going on there presently), or the storage yard for traders barrows, which are both in Birkbeck Road. When you look at the Council's proposals you'll see it is pushing to do away with barrows in favour of uniform stall types - flat pack stalls to be set up and dismantled daily (by someone) and stored (somewhere) off site - to "improve the look of the market". Nothing to do then with the consultant's recommendation that doing away with the barrows would "leave a considerable piece of land available along Birkbeck Road. LBH may wish to give consideration to alternative use of this area of land possibly for Residential Development"

Ridley Road Market - the home of the bargain
Neneh Cherry and Andi Oliver buy some bunches of callaloo. It's the home of the bargain - but how do we keep it that way?

Tory conference learns about Spirit and "Tesco-fication".

2009-10-12T09:55:00.015+01:00

In this video clip Graeme Archer tells the Tory Conference about how local people, and particularly Spirit, were powerless to prevent Hackney Council auctioning off local businesses to off-shore companies in 2002. The auctions were not just of properties in Broadway Market but a Georgian terrace of thriving businesses in Dalston Lane too - and just look what has become of them. Despite Council policies, and crocodile tears, the Dalston shopkeepers were deprived of the opportunity to buy their shops when the terrace was put in the auction as one lot and many have since been evicted. Then there were arson attacks and four houses were burnt out. The Council have since, at public expense, demolished three of the houses. Following recent public consulation the Council's planning brief for the terrace is awaited.

Graeme Archer also raises the issue of the "Tesco-fication" of our high streets - the loss of retail diversity, independent small businesses and local character. Local communities are resisting this all over the country. Tesco have an outstanding planning application for the major redevelopment of its Morning Lane site which includes two thirteen-storey residential tower blocks on top of a new store. The development will dominate St John at Hackney churchyard gardens and Hackney's earliest monument - the 13th century Grade 1 listed St Augustine's Tower.You can see and comment on the application on Hackney Council's Planning Department web site here.

Image gimped by sdit.org.uk

"....Where possible, a supermarket operator underwrites the whole development, erecting towers on site, so that Hackney becomes a suburb of Tesco, with streets, permanently under cosmetic revision, replaced by 24-hour aisles. Light and weather you can control. Behaviour is monitored by a discreet surveillance technology..."
Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books, June 2009

The first train to Dalston Junction in 25 years

2009-10-08T14:09:00.004+01:00

Watch BBC film here of the first train to arrive at Dalston Junction since it closed in 1984. The line will start taking passengers next June.

Even what they have will be taken away

2009-10-04T17:19:00.026+01:00

Lowell 'Spirit' Grant has lost his claim against Hackney Council for compensation following the sale of his home and business at auction to an off-shore company.

"He was plainly proud of the business which he had built up since 1993. It is sad that this was taken from him " said the Judge "It is unfortunate that these offshore companies are purchasing properties and are able to avoid the same fees and taxes which others would have to pay".

Spirit had wanted to buy his property and met the Council's property agents, Nelson Bakewell, prior to the auction. Although he had handed over his cheque for £10,000 deposit, and signed a document, the property was later sold at auction for £15,000 less than Spirit had agreed to pay. The cheque was later posted back to him without explanation.

The Council's agent agreed it was possible that Spirit may have signed something at the pre-auction meeting but the Judge found that, whatever it was, it was not proved to be a sale contract. The property agents later returned the file to the Council but despite investigations by the Council's Internal Audit, and a Scrutiny Committee Inquiry, the document has never been produced .

The Council's agent said that Spirit must have known of the auction of the property well in advance because he had been there to measure it up. Why the auction catalogue described Spirit's residential flat above the shop as 'storage' remains a mystery.

The Council's agents gave evidence at the trial, which the Judge accepted, that they went ahead and auctioned the property because Spirit had told them that his cheque would not be honoured. A member of Spirit's family said on oath that they had agreed to make an immediate transfer of funds.

Following a three year battle, and despite all the rent being up to date, Spirit was evicted last year for failing to pay the off-shore landlord's legal costs awarded in its possession proceedings at a time when Spirit had no legal representation. The Court of Appeal found that in the case of business tenants the Court did not have the same power, which it has for purely residential occupiers, to allow them time to pay.

Should we beware the east wind?

2009-10-04T15:52:00.007+01:00

Extensive radioactive contamination has been found on the 2012 Olympic site. OPEN has made an appeal for funds to meet the cost of commissioning an independent nuclear scientist to report on the working methods and risks arising from the excavation works on the site at Stratford. .

If you can assist with funding the independent scientist's report please contact openuk@gmail.net

Bad news for Dalston. Worse news for Barratt.

2009-09-17T16:02:00.064+01:00

Bad News: The Dalston Square"regeneration project" has beaten other shortlisted projects to win the first ever, but already notorious, Ceausescu Golden Spoon Award. You can see more here

TfL's artist impression of the Dalston Square development - with further enhancements by a Dalston artist. Click on the image to enlarge it. The scheme is a public/private development by Hackney Council (which itself described the development as "austere"), the Greater London Authority and their private sector "partner" Barratt. It has involved demolition of historic buildings, environmental blight and massive public subsidy.

The Dalston Square development was always a strong favorite to bottom out the Ceausescu Award criteria for oppressive scale, bulldozed planning and architectural hype but it only just managed to see off fierce competition from the Peninsula Square development in Greenwich, the Aldgate Union Tower in Tower Hamlets and Newham’s Queen's Market development. Queens Market scooped the silver spoon award and the wooden spoon went to Waltham Forest Council’s Arcade site scheme. Unfortunately the handful of politicians and public officials responsible for the Dalston Square project were not present at the ceremony to receive the award or the further public appreciation for their efforts which they so richly deserve.

Worse news: for debt-laden Barratt, the national volume house builder, which is contracted to build the 20-storey towers of the Dalston Square development. Bank of America-Merrill Lynch has said that Barratt was "behind the curve" and now, say analysts at Investec, it could be described financially as "irreparably damaged".

The £40million concrete building slab spanning the soon to be reopened Dalston Junction overground station. The claims that Barratt are to build green and eco towers on The Slab has a hollow ring when the financial and carbon cost of The Slab are considered.

Investec's unfortunate comment comes on the eve of Barratt's anticipated £500million cash call for deperately needed investment and just when it is due to start building more tower blocks on The Slab, the second half of the Dalston Square scheme, this October. Barratt's difficulties could explain the mystery regarding its section 106 contributions which is said to put at risk Hackney Council's new library planned for the Dalston Square scheme

'The worship of Mammon' by Evelyn de Morgan 1909, updated by dunkdigital.com 2009

Barratt, like other housebuilders, has been hit very hard by the continuing credit freeze despite the assistance from government bail-outs and an enticing marketing campaign locally. It has sought to maintain cash flow by a "buy to let" campaign marketing Dalston Square in Singapore which has, reportedly, seen 23 of the flats "snapped up". Barratt, with other national housebuilders, is also reported to have been seeking to maintain house prices by "drip feeding" its new properties into the market.

PS Is that a rumour of a takeover we can hear snapping at Barratt's heels?

The curtains up on Arcola Theatre's plans

2009-08-02T15:36:00.030+01:00

This week Arcola Theatre is presenting its proposals to the public for developing a site in Ashwin Street, Dalston, as its future home. The vision includes "an expanded Arcola Theatre venue including an enlarged main house to draw exceptional national and international productions. Around this core will sit the Arcola Energy sustainable technology incubator, enterprise and skills studios and ethical café/bar/restaurant facilities."

The Theatre has outgrown its current premises in Arcola Street, Dalston.

Whilst plans for what the new Arcola will contain are well developed, the precise site and architectural scheme are far from decided. Thus the launch of the proposals is accompanied by a public exhibition of 18 very different architectural possibilities which Arcola hope will further ongoing discussions about the future of Dalston Junction. More details about the Future Arcola consultation exhibiton can be seen here. You can visit the exhibition between 10.30am - 5.30pm every day until Friday 7th August at Studio 5 in Arcola Street Dalston. Let them know you are coming by telephoning 0207 503 1646.

Part of the Future Arcola Theatre exhibition.

OPEN members will recall how in 2005 Arcola's Executive Director and energy scientist Dr Ben Todd and Executive Producer and writer Leyal Nazli worked and campaigned with OPEN to try and save the old Dalston Theatre and locally listed Georgian houses for re-use. Arcola Theatre's founder and Artistic Director, Mehmet Ergen, wrote an impassioned letter to Hackney's Planning Comittee members urging them to consider multiple uses for the site, including a new and much needed expanded venue for Arcola Theatre.

The original plans for the new 1898 entrance to the Dalston Theatre of Varities, built forward from the original 1886 Dalston circus entrance, at 12 Dalston Lane.

Sadly Hackney demolished the buildings and that site is now part of Barrat's 'Dalston Square' tower-block scheme at Dalston Junction.

Nevertheless Arcola Theatre's ambition and determination has continued and many of its visions are already being realised - not least progress towards becoming the first carbon neutral theatre in the UK. These pictures illustrate some of its diverse activities.

Training in theatre technology takes place for young people at Arcola theatre.

Arcola Youth Theatre gives training and performance opportunities for the next generation of actors.

One of Arcola Theatre's many performances in their bar.

Arcola Theatre has gone international - here is its theatre in Istanbul.

Don't miss the exhibition Future Arcola. It's a chance to see and comment on what the future could hold for Arcola Theatre and for a key site at Ashwin Street, Dalston. The development could anchor the emerging creative hub there and greatly enhance the public space.

Ashwin Street, Dalston with the Reeves Printhouse at the northern end - already a hub for small creative businesses.

Dalston's Four Aces Club revisited

2009-07-16T01:10:00.012+01:00

You can read a nostalgic reminder of what made Dalston's Four Aces Club so legendary here . If you don't know the local history then watch out for the next showing of OPEN campaigner Winstan Whittar's brilliant film "Legacy in the dust" which was premiered at a packed meeting in Cafe Oto, Dalston recently
Hackney's very own Count Shelley and the former club at 12 Dalston Lane

If you are new in Dalston and wondering why the Four Aces Club was demolished then read "The story that was never told" which explains it and why, instead, we're getting this -

Take it! Take another little pizza. My art.

2009-07-15T08:00:00.047+01:00

Dalston's derelict 'eastern curve' railway site has been reclaimed as public space under cover of the Barbican Gallery's 'Radical Nature' art exhibition.

The site is now open for business with a series of afternoon and evening events until 2nd August including performances produced by Dalston's Arcola Theatre, Gahu Dramatic Arts, pedal powered music, the emergency urban psychoanalysis commando unit and other delights. Follow the links here for the programme.

The site's headline artwork takes the form of a windpowered pizza oven

Thanks to Joseph ODriscoll for this image
and part of the site has been planted with wheat uprooted from Lancashire and driven all the way to Dalston for replanting.

The wheat is to echo the iconic image of the wheatfield sown by Agnes Denes in 1982 to contrast with the towers of Manhattan.

Meanwhile we're waiting to see if Barratt can afford to start the next phase of 10 - 20 storey towerblocks on The Slab in Dalston this October.

The art installation is rumored to cost over £30,000 for the three week event and has received gushing press reviews - "artists are putting their shoulder to the wheel, trying to prompt the revolution in values and attitudes required to deal with environmental crisis". It will certainly provoke debate about radical and sustainable urban ecology.

On this subject there are plenty of radical ideas about and some, like the new King Henry's walk community organic garden, are already happening. Dalston is really buzzing!

The site is owned by the public authorities and over recent decades has frequently been fly-tipped, squatted and stripped bare by human carrion of anything which could be sold. Backing onto the site is the Ashwin Street terrace of historic houses, left vacant and increasingly ruinous, and which includes the most recent old Dalston house to have been burned down in nine recent fires.
The entrance to the site is through a gate at the rear of Dalston's Peace Mural . Lets hope the access and public use of the site will remain once the wheat is harvested and the windmill dismantled.

PS: You will see a lot of new graffiti art is appearing around the site.

PSst: Don't tell the Council - you know what enthusiasts their "clean up team" are.

Don't look up! More towers planned for London Fields

2009-06-30T21:53:00.023+01:00

Last Thursday Southern Housing Group (SHG), a charity, gave a public presentation to the local community of its scheme for a second towerblock at London Fields, eastside. SHG said it had considered feedback from meetings with Hackney Council and Boris's GLA planners when designing the "slender" 19 storey tower development of 78 very high density flats, houses and commercial units.

It was claimed that, compared with the existing site at 22-24 London Lane, the design and scale of the development would "enhance" the surrounding low rise buildings of the Mare Street Conservation Area. Admittedly it is not in a designated Tall Building Opportunity Area - but the professional view was that at street level people apparently don't notice towers (Don't look up!).

SHG said it wants "a scheme everyone is happy with" but members of the public voiced passionate objections to the development for a whole range of reasons. Perhaps people fear yet another charitable developer is seeking to exploit the London Fields location to the comunities disadvantage. Will SHG redesign its scheme to meet local objections or just plough on regardless?

If you can offer support or skills to help the the local community in London fields then you can find "No Hackney High-Rise" contact details here.

PS The meeting was held in Free Form Arts' Hothouse, an award winning development on London Fields east. Superbly designed and finished. A low-rise building delivering community benefits.

High Court upholds Ridley Road Market trader's appeal.

2009-06-19T22:39:00.039+01:00

A Ridley Road Market trader has had his appeal to the High Court upheld. We have previously told how Leslie 'Bonner' Ware had won his appeal to the Magistrates Court after the Council tried to revoke his market trading licence. But the Council refused to pay his legal costs. "It was taking liberties, so I appealed again" said Bonner "We went to trial in the High Court in The Strand. And we won again. Now its going to cost the Council double. It's all public money and an absolute disgrace"

OPEN has reported before about how Hackney Council's bean-counters were going bananas in Ridley Road Market. They had been revoking traders licences, cutting off the electric to their stalls, closing down the market store and prosecuting traders for selling by the bowl or the bunch. It was all getting rather personal. And then the Council's prosecutions policy went pear shaped when the government finally stepped in - it said that the prosecutions were "not in the public interest".

It emerged that Hackney Council planned to redevelop Ridley Road market. And that would be much easier if the traders only had "temporary" licences with no rights of appeal to the Courts. It has revoked numerous markets traders' licences. But most Ridely Road traders are not prepared to be bullied or bribed by bureaucrats. One such is Leslie "Bonner" Ware, a third generation Ridley Road market trader. We told his story here. "It is lucky that I could afford to take the risk of appealing" said Bonner " Many new young traders feel too intimidated." And so Bonner appealed to the Magistrates Court, and won. Then he appealed again to the High Court , for his legal costs to be paid, and won again. Hackney now have to pay the costs of both appeals.

In addition to the £thousands the Council has lost pursuing its policies it has also allocated some £300,000 in fees for consultants to come up with a redevelopment plan for the market. During OPEN's recent public consultation on the Council's "Dalston Area Action Plan - Masterplan" most people said that they don't want the market to be "redeveloped" or "regenerated".

Ridley Road market is at the heart of Dalston life. Most local people want to see its character, as a traditional outdoor street market selling affordable goods and fresh produce, preserved and to see decent conditions for traders and shoppers. Yes - there is plenty of room for improvements. A good start would be to restore lighting to the market stalls and repair the market store. It is now over a year since the Council cut off the electric.

Watch the video
Neneh Cherry and Andi Oliver buy some bunches of callaloo from Janet Devers in Ridley Road. They think Ridley is "The Home of the Bargain!" Long may it continue.