Planning committee meets on 12 May

We're nearly there! We have a date of 12 May for the planning committee to make a decision on the redevelopment of Horizon school.

You still have a little time if you haven't already written your objection to the plans.

To help those of you who want to write but aren't sure what to say, we have outlined the broad concerns you have been expressing in meetings, emails and at your doorsteps. Pick whatever helps you and use it – if you can put it in your own words that's great, but if not – use these ones instead.

For your comments to be properly considered by the planning department, you need to get them in sooner rather than later though. Every comment makes a difference – especially a personal one from the heart.

You can email your objections to our planning officer: steve.andrews@hackney.gov.uk; do ask for an email acknowledgment.

The plans are on http://www.hackney.gov.uk/planning.htm plan number: 2011/0383. A paper copy (actually a huge  pile of papers!) is in Coffee Corner on the corner of Belgrade and Wordsworth Road as well.

What you have been telling us

In the plans we are being sold a landmark “civic building”. But it has no reference to the citizens who will have to live with it.

·       This small school site will double its intake and triple its staff (staff/pupil ratio will be 1:1). This will bring already significant traffic and noise levels beyond those acceptable in a dense residential area.

·       There will be around 300 people on site with all the deliveries, traffic, rubbish and noise this will bring with it.

·       The plans say it will bring in children from outside the borough for “revenue generation”, despite being told it needed to be that size for Hackney’s children.

·       The whole plan is too large and extravagant for the available land and has been designed around building a road to drop children off rather than educational requirements.

·       The site is so dense there is no room for any future change of remit (the history of the school is that it changes its intake criteria regularly).

·       A proposed “light installation” will drown the neighbouring houses in light every night till 11pm and be 10 times stronger than the light from the adjacent houses to create an art feature! (See Design and Access statement Appendix 7)

   * The density of the planned new building means:

- Around 30 trees will be cut down. This is not supported by Hackney’s own TPO department and according to them, plans to replace with new mature trees are unrealistic and unworkable.

- A road being built into the school land to drop off the children will bizarrely double as a playground. The road will accommodate at least 7 buses twice daily and additional transport throughout the day – despite earlier assurances to the contrary. This will include refuse trucks and kitchen deliveries for 300 people.

- Five parking spaces will go on Prince George Road simply to accommodate the turning circle of these huge trucks.

- There are 10 parking spaces allocated for the 150 staff on site.

- Almost all the open and green space (which we enjoy and daily see Horizon pupils enjoying) will be built over. The children will have almost nowhere to run around.

- The drop-off road is directly adjacent to residents’ tiny gardens (which are only 10-foot long) so psychologically and physically hems in locals’ back gardens. It exits back onto the residential road alongside houses, where currently there is open green space.

- The entirely new huge facade of the school on Prince George Road (currently an open green play area) will dominate a very narrow street of modest Victorian houses.

- The existing residential road (currently with no school entrance) already struggles with heavy traffic usage and there is a history of problems and road rage. Residents’ parking bays will be decreased and a new loading facility (used daily for the school) will take the place of other spaces.

- There has never been a “moving traffic” survey done – in other words no proper traffic plan has been developed despite the huge increase in staff and pupils; despite being told the new road will be used throughout the day; despite the loss of parking to accommodate the buses turning onto the small street.

- A roof garden is planned, which will breach privacy and add yet more height to the buildings with railings that aren’t shown on the plans. This has been added at the eleventh hour and without any consultation. We can only infer that this is to create more outside space lacking in the design.

- The statutory bat survey was not done properly – in fact it was done in December when bats are hibernating!

- The plans take no account of the tree preservation orders that have been granted, which is another example of residents views simply being ignored.

Destroying a natural habitat

vulpus vulpus: the urban fox often seen
in the Horizon grounds

Apart from the mature trees that the redevelopment team have deemed redundant, little has been said about the natural habitat that the small but invaluable green spaces of the school provide. Horizon, located across from Butterfield Green has constituted in many ways a 'natural' extension of the former in terms of sustaining the local wildlife. 

two tiny pipistrelles flying next to
the Horizon green area at Prince George Road

Many a spring night passers-by have seen foxes emerging from Butterfield Green and startled by the lights of passing cars run into the safety of the Horizon green area on Wordsworth Road. Or children have marvelled at the tiny frogs hopping near the little abandoned pond by Wordsworth Road. And, of course. the tiny pipistrelle bats dancing in the sky over the ash trees at Prince George Road at dusk every summer and then flying on towards Butterfield Green only to reappear a little later.

Too small, too insignificant? We do not think so. Perhaps their imminent consignment to oblivion is a sign of the times. 

Tree Preservation Order Granted!

Most of the local residents who asked Hackney Council to issue a tree preservation order for the established trees in the Horizon School grounds will be happy to know that the Council made a U-turn and have granted a TPO. This unexpected turn of events proves yet again that collective local action to protect the environment and our neighbourhood really works.


More details on the TPO will be posted shortly.

Tree Preservation Order news

Hackney Council received a number of requests to consider issuing a Tree Preservation Order for the trees in the current Horizon School from local residents and other people whose work or other daily routines bring them to the area. 

In answer to one of the requests signed by several local residents the case council officer responded  that he

appreciates the signatories' attachment to the trees and their effect on our views and the street', but Hackney are currently not planning to serve an order.

He then stressed 

this is not because the trees do not warrant one but because, even with a TPO, the trees could still be removed if a planning permission allowed it; a planning permission over-rides a TPO,

and finally added 

in this particular case my superiors are satisfied that a TPO is not yet expedient.

Our collective TPO request stressed the value of the trees and the green area around them for the local wildlife as well as the visual and aesthetic value of the trees, but the Council response entirely ignores this dimension of the residents' campaign to save the mature trees in Horizon school choosing to dismiss the request as merely one about views and attachment to the trees!

We are left wondering why then there is a department dealing with tree preservation orders if their decisions are by definition potentially redundant. Perhaps the department has a view on that?