Period costume at an event reopening the Clock Tower in 2019

NEIGHBOURS of the historic Caledonian Park Clock Tower say they can’t hear their own televisions when parties are held at the visitor centre.

The complaints were revealed as Islington granted permission this week for longer opening hours, including at the Tolpuddle Cafe.

Planning councillors ruled it could continue to 9pm, apart from on Sundays when it will close at 6pm.

Islington restored the Clock Tower with the help of a £2million National Lottery grant and began opening it to the public after a grand reopening in 2019.

But residents living nearby say the council has gone back on pledges to limit disturbance to them – and argued the noise will only get worse with increased opening hours.

“The council have broken their promise, which we’re very unhappy about,” said Lizzy McInnerny, an actor who lives in a block of flats in close proximity to the tower.

She spoke to oppose the application at Tuesday night’s planning committee meeting.

She said that one party in the cafe with loud music meant she couldn’t hear her television, even with her windows and doors closed.

The extended opening hours “sets the precedent that the quality of life of local residents can always be overlooked to generate income,” she told the committee.

But Bhupesh Thapa, the central area parks manager, told the meeting that the extended opening hours would allow the cafe to be a better community asset.

Lizzy McInnerny, right, explains her objections at Tuesday’s planning meeting

“One example is the prospect of working with young people,” he said. “Over winter, they weren’t able to carry out programmes they wanted to do after school and into the evening.

“It’s a bit of an open book – the demand for community use in that building is growing … we don’t get enquiries for corporate parties or anything like that, the demand is ‘can we do these community sessions’.”

Miriam Ashwell, chair of the Caledonian Park Friends Group, also spoke in favour of the application and said the party Ms McInnerny had referred to had been an “unauthorised event”.

She said: “We have been holding some meetings there, and we’ve been regularly asking the chair of the residents’ association and other local residents who live within 20 metres, and we haven’t heard a single word of problems from those community activities.

“If anything, I believe these community activities provide a really great community benefit, but also provide a deterrent to those anti-social behaviour elements who do hang around, who set off fireworks without permission, and I believe that on the evenings that there are community-led activities in the park, that that anti-social behaviour is reduced because of increased surveillance.”

But Ms McInnerny told the Tribune: “The end of New Clocktower Place acts like a wind tunnel, it not only creates wind, but it sucks up the noise from down there and has a kind of strange acoustic amplification, so that people living on those corners can hear conversations in front of the cafe.

“So you can imagine what it’s like if there’s a children’s party with 20 kids screaming and loud music and they’ve got all the windows and doors open in the back.”

She added: “We’re not opposed to having the ‘knit and natter’ group or quiet meetings, of course not. It’s entirely about a sound issue and it’s about parties of any description.”