Back to school on the remains of the transport system. Clancy’s choked off Stamford Hill and the tubes are on strike.
It seems so unfair that key figures like Rob Crowe can make us suffer while other public sector workers, equally deserving, never get the chance. Think of the gallant men of Hackney Council Planning Department. If they extended their sick leave into a permanent strike, who would even notice? (Apart from a few developers trying to get retrospective permission for their latest atrocity.)
I thought we’d seen it all round here, with shoebox apartments shoehorned into people’s backyards for half a million quid, but even I am appalled by the shoddiness of the development on Bouverie Road beside the old Nun’s home. They’ve tried to add a touch of wit, with French windows that open onto mid-air and front steps made from chopped-up fire escapes, but the effect is still poverty-stricken and boring. My nursery school teacher says that modern buildings reflect modern society; and if we want anything better than the basic box designed by the duller members of her class, then we’d better provide Better Lego Sets for Architects. With more little coloured bits, a few more basic shapes, and maybe a choice of brickwork.
The featureless brick box has always been beloved of the Council. To make room for more of them, there seems to be a hidden campaign to clear any interesting buildings out of the borough. Look at the Victorian Villa on the corner of Lordship Road and Lordship Park. Any number of people wanted to restore it but all enquiries were rebuffed until it got sold for a song to a developer. Who has left it to rot until it can be knocked down and replaced by a flat-roofed school box with a box of flats where the playground ought to be. Whoever gave permission for this is probably enjoying the sunshine now with the guy who designed Clissold Leisure Centre, but there may also be an ideological element to justify these decisions. If you want to make things equal, then it’s obviously easier to knock down the good bits than to build up the bad ones. The Commisariat has decreed that Hoxditch is the artistic centre of the borough, and that Stokey is elitist and must be grottified in line with Leninist thinking. Sanctioning ugly and inappropriate developments is, therefore, a form of positive discrimination.
How many streets like Church Street are there in London? With a park one end, a medieval church, 18th century cottages, handsome independent shops, an enormous wild graveyard full of trees and wildlife? Other councils would value this conservation area and foster the village feel that Londoners want so much. Hackney seems to have done everything it can to wreck the place. In the early 1960s it produced a masterplan to bulldoze the entire southern side of the street. Spoilsports stopped them after the demolition of a single corner (and its replacement with a concrete minibox of flats.) But the Council has let it go to wrack and ruin ever since, replacing shops with yawning holes or brick boxes wherever possible. Original paving stones have been replaced with a tacky mish-mash of asphalt, cheap aluminium shopfronts have been smiled upon, and the traffic flow has been disrupted to produce a permanent jam.
We wanted to ask the planners about the derelict health centre opposite our shop. The switchboard gave us a range of numbers, none of which worked, and we found ourselves talking to a bloke in Property Services. Who, I have to say, was absolutely brilliant. We asked why the Council was letting the building fall down, and he said we had no right to assume it belonged to the Council. Even if it used to, the situation might have changed – we didn’t have documentary proof, did we? No, he couldn’t look it up on his computer because it might not be there. And then where would we be? No, we would have to write him a letter so he could come and check for himself. Now, if he could not locate this location, what then would be the situation? Later, someone in Planning picked up the phone by mistake and, before he was fully awake, admitted that the Council owned the building. He said it was uninhabitable (except by the Camelot Security guards who lived there) and the Council had no money to fix it. He admitted, reluctantly, that it might go to auction when no-one was looking.
Damn! I’ve just cycled to work again, when I should be using up the last of our business permit. They want 600 quid for a new one that doesn’t entitle you to park anywhere, and like most other businesses on the street, we feel we can’t afford it. It’s only fair, I suppose; they’ve already stopped the customers parking anywhere. It’s part of the masterplan to eliminate shops from city centres and eradicate private enterprise from the borough.
Fashion advice is keep up with climate change and enjoy the Indian Summer. Plenty of time for coats and boots from January through to June.
Mortimer is CEO (Planning) for Ribbons and Taylor
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