Alicia, Patricia, Bill, Mark, Kate, Ryan and Owen at the Archway community hall meeting

IT was standing room only beneath the vaulted ceiling of an Archway community hall on Tuesday evening, where 100 people gathered to discuss a major new development on their doorsteps that could include a 27-storey skyscraper, likened by one local resident to a “great big middle finger”.

Archway Campus, the site of the controversial plans, is a cluster of redbrick former medical training buildings on Highgate Hill behind Navigator Square, which have stood empty for 12 years.

Developer Seven­Capital – which bought the site from Peabody in 2021 – submitted a planning application to Islington Council last month, which includes a skyscraper of private student accom­modation as well as private and affordable homes.

Residents in nearby streets are, for the most part, organising to oppose the scheme

Mark Davies, of Lidyard Road, told the meeting: “I live one brick’s distance from the Archway Campus, so I’m right on top of it. The planning submission is over 300 documents, it’s thousands of pages, it’s huge.

“Most of us have never done this before. We are not serial objectors, we would really like to get back to our normal lives.”

Mr Davies chaired the meeting, and residents from other nearby streets and the Academy, flats that back onto the site, raised concerns, including wind blight, over­shadowing and the demolition of historic buildings.

Bill Gaver, of Lidyard Road, said the tower would “change the nature of Archway forever,” and that one of the proposed new buildings in the plan – known as Block A – would “loom over” their homes, “steal our light, our privacy and basically make our lives hell”.

Academy resident Lucy Tauber also addressed the meeting about Block A.

How the tower could look

She said: “This proposal has a seven-storey, 21-metre-high wall of a building, and it’s planned for less than the length of a bus away from the windows of our forever homes.

“Let’s remind Islington Council that we stand as one community for the sustainable redevelopment of this site, and send this cynical, greedy and nasty proposal, this unkind proposal, back to the drawing board.”

Several residents mentioned that when the developer was consulting with them on the plans last year, there was an alternative on the table that did not include the skyscraper.

Known as “Plan B”, it had fewer overall housing units but would be less intrusive for current residents.

However, Mr Davies said, according to the developer it was Islington Council who advised SevenCapital to submit Plan A – the version with the tower – rather than Plan B, on the basis that the former includes 50 per cent affordable housing, while the latter does not.

But Kate Calvert, of the Better Archway Forum, pointed out that only 91 housing units – out of a total 420, including student accom­modation – would be affordable. “Affordable” housing can cost up to 80 per cent of market rates.

Only 58 units would be offered at social rents and the majority will be studios or one-bedrooms, making them unsuitable for families on Islington’s housing waiting list.

Three candidates for the Junction ward by-election also spoke at the meeting, as did Islington North MP Jeremy Corbyn, who said the development would not meet the needs of the community.

Some people were more positive about the Archway Campus plans, including economist Lauren Thomas, who was representing Islington YIMBY, a new organisation promoting good development.

She said: “It was encouraging to see so many people say that they support housing, but I fear that the project will simply languish for another several years.”

She added that she was indifferent to the exact layout of the new site, “except insofar as I would like to see the maximum amount of housing built.”

Islington’s planning chief Councillor Martin Klute told the Tribune: “The proposal includes a very tall building in an area that’s not zoned for very tall buildings.

“If the developers are looking for the council to make an exception in any aspect of the develop­ment, they need to provide exceptional justification for it, and we don’t yet have that.”

SevenCapital did not respond to a request for comment.