Young footballers at the Finsbury Leisure Centre pitches

A COMMUNITY’S fight to save football pitches near Old Street has entered extra-time as redevelopment plans for Finsbury Leisure Centre – including a 20-storey block of flats – go to the council for a final decision.

The four bookable pitches played on by local children, nearby City workers and former England football stars, have been earmarked for development for more than a decade.

The latest plans were first shared with residents at public meetings earlier this year and include 198 new homes, 100 of which will be social housing, public space, a medical centre, a new leisure centre and rooftop football pitches – although these will be less than half the size of the current pitches and only accommodate five- and six-a-side games.

Parents of youngsters at the City of London Football Club, which coaches about 200 local children at the pitches, told the Tribune that three years of building works and a new high-rise will decimate their community.

“It’s like taking a youth club away and then you wonder why kids end up on the streets, but where else are they going to go?” said Tommy and Archie’s mother – who asked that her sons’ names be used rather than her own, because they are the ones set to lose out from the redevelopment.

Alfie’s mother, whose son plays for City of London’s under-6s, added: “We’re all mums of boys, so what’s the statistics that one of them won’t make it to 25?”

City of London coach Eamon Gately said the club will have to downsize if the development goes ahead.

It’s not only boys who play there – former Arsenal and England forward Ellen Maggs and right-back Alex Scott both dribbled across the Bunhill pitches when they were young aspiring footballers.

Ms Maggs told the Tribune: “I think the reason I went on to play at a high level was because I played with the boys ­regularly, and having structured football really, really helped.

“There are not enough pitches in Islington, full stop.”

On the outside looking in

She acknowledged that rooftop pitches are a fine alternative but said that reducing the overall size of pitches would be a disservice to the young people who were essentially kept at home for two years during the ­pan­­­demic.

A campaign, EC1Voices, comprising local residents, sports groups and budding players’ parents, has 4,000 signatures and raised nearly £13,000 to fund legal advice to help them challenge the development, which they say will “cast local homes and public areas into permanent shadow”.

EC1Voices coordinator Eva Guerra, whose son plays for City of London, said: “It’s sad that we have to dedicate all the resources of the community to getting our voices heard.

“[My son] asks, ‘why are they taking it away from us?’ And that’s a very tough question as a parent who has no power to affect the outcome of this to answer.

“That’s probably why I’m doing what I’m doing, because I want to have answers for him.”

Despite the local opposition, Bunhill councillors are firm in their support for the development.

Labour’s Valerie Bossman-Quarshie said she would prefer the new pitches to be like-for-like in terms of size, but that the development ticks important boxes in terms of housing and recreational and public space.

She said: “It’s not coming home. We need to make sure that housing is the thing that’s coming home.

“When I visit schools and I see the next generation, how can I say to them, ‘when you get older there might not be housing for you because we didn’t do this development’?

“Can you imagine being told that you were born and raised in a borough where now you’re getting squeezed out?”

Independent councillor Phil Graham said housing is desperately needed and local opponents are being unfair on the new scheme.

“There will still be football pitches, there are going to be improved facilities for other sports and we’re actually going to have green space – for everybody, not just for those who can pay for it.”

He added: “If I could take over empty offices and make them into housing, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

Islington is currently buying back former council homes – sold off through the Right to Buy scheme – at a rate of four per week, one of the biggest buy-back schemes in the country. But even this, Cllr Graham said, is a “drop in the ocean” compared to the scale of the housing crisis.

Islington has about 15,000 people on the waiting list for housing, many of who are living in temporary accommodation outside the borough, and the number of people sleeping rough in the borough has increased since 2023.