Idea of buildings’ scale shown pink, looking south from Penderyn Way

From an open letter to council leader Kaya Comer-Schwartz

• WE are a group of residents from houses neighbouring the Holloway Prison site, from Penderyn Way and Trecastle Way, and are writing to you in relation to Peabody’s planning application for the site.

We collectively objected to this development along with nearly 200 other objectors due to the detrimental impact the proposal will have on existing residents, contrary to Islington’s planning policy.

We are not opposed to the development of the site and recognise the opportunity to provide much-needed housing in our borough. However this level of harm to existing residents should not be accepted.

The current proposals are grossly inappropriate in terms of scale and massing both in the context of the character of the area and in its immediate relationship to its neighbours.

Nine out of 15 of the new proposed blocks will breach the 30-metre height limit set by local planning policy. The smallest of the 15 blocks proposed is 24 metres tall and the tallest block is 50 metres tall.

Residents of Penderyn Way will live only 19 metres away from the smallest block, which is proposed to be five to six storeys taller than our houses, effectively three times the height of our homes.

The current proposals, as we detailed in our objection letter, will result in adverse impacts in relation to overlooking, overshadowing, daylight, sunlight and over-dominance. Hundreds of local people will see significant reductions in daylight and sunlight.

The planning officer committee report stated that the harm caused to our estate along with other neighbouring homes will be “proportionately high and, in some instances, severe”.

The report advised the committee considering the application that: “in its current form, the proposal needs to be considered as a departure from the Local Plan. To be acceptable any such departure from Local Plan policy must be robustly justified by other material considerations and would need to demonstrate overriding planning benefits. While the scheme does not include any landmark very tall towers, the large proportion of buildings higher than 30m and the amount to which they are higher than the surrounding context, is a clear increase in scale which will change the character of the area. The proposal is a marked move away from the typical lower rise character of some residential areas in Islington which has been identified and long protected by the tall buildings policies in Islington.”

At the committee the planning officer and objectors spoke, detailing the level of harm that would be done to neighbouring residents.

The committee members were silent on this issue during their deliberations. They did not discuss, debate, acknowledge, or openly take into consideration, these issues.

None of the reasons they identified for the deferral of a decision on this application relate to this impact on existing residents.

We can therefore only conclude that the benefits of the scheme, presumably the quantity of new homes that are to be built and the benefits to future residents, are deemed to outweigh the serious impacts to existing residents, your constituents.

While we have been given the opportunity to voice our objections to the planning committee it feels very much like no one is listening.

Our ward councillor, who was due to sit on the committee, recused themselves. We feel under-represented and ignored.

We urge you to raise this with the chair of the committee and ask that these issues be on the agenda when these proposals are next under consideration by councillors to ensure transparency in their decision-making and to give residents the decency of a reply to their very valid objections.

Existing residents feel their rights are not being treated as equal to those of the prospective residents of the site.

Future residents are not getting a good deal either. Other objectors have detailed the many flaws with the design of the proposed housing.

This will be the largest development our borough has seen in over 30 years, and it looks as though this majority Labour committee will wave through the current proposals which carry the political advantage of an apparent quick-fix for the local housing crisis.

However, the incongruous scale of the proposals and the low-quality design will become apparent in time, and if permission is granted, having chosen to clearly go against local planning policy despite the warnings, this would represent a great risk to the integrity of the Islington Labour Party.

RESIDENTS OF PENDERYN WAY & TRECASTLE WAY