More tall storeys for Dalston Square

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

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

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

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.

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 siteSinclair'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)

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

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.