ISLINGTON

INDEPENDENT WORKING CLASS ASSOCIATION

No support for playground sell-off

8th February 2008

Parents and residents reject luxury flat development at Hugh Myddelton School

PLANS to build a nine-storey block of luxury flats on the playground of Hugh Myddelton School have been met with large scale opposition from parents and local residents. 

The IWCA has collected a petition against the development signed by more than 400 parents and residents, disproving the claim that it has any kind of popular support.

Unquestionably, the school needs improvement and no-one opposes that. But what people have objected to is the idea that school green and play spaces should be sold off to pay for it.

Childhood obesity is on the rise, yet the current plans would see the school lose half of the infants' playground, along with green space and foliage. Islington already has the least green space of any of the 33 London boroughs.

In addition, during the construction period, the school will be next door to a building site. The construction of a nine-storey building will require a crane and excavators. How will the noise and dust affect the teaching at the school? What guarantees are there about health and safety?

These concerns also apply to the residents of Spa Green estate who will have a building site under their noses, in addition to losing light and having their view affected.

At the planning stage the development was opposed by Islington Council's own conservation and landscape officers, as well as English Heritage and even the Crime Prevention Design Officer. Yet, remarkably, councillors voted in favour.

They have attempted to justify this by saying it will provide much needed housing. Half of the new flats will be ‘key-worker' homes, which are meant to be available to teachers who otherwise couldn't afford to live in Islington. But reports show that key-worker housing across London is being left empty, too expensive for the people it was supposedly designed for.

The other half will be private apartments, far beyond the financial reach of anyone other than the  very wealthy. IWCA representative Sharon Hayward said, "Most of Hugh Myddelton's pupils live in the EC1 New Deal area, identified as having high levels of poverty. Yet councillors see nothing wrong in handing over a large chunk of their play area to big business to build luxury flats on.

"This is because it fits in with the council's plan to change the ‘social mix' of the borough: sell off council-owned homes, land, shops and community facilities to private developers and replace working class residents with a ‘better class' of person eager to settle close to the City's financial centre.

"And so, just as they did with the proposed redevelopment of the Kings Square estate, (which tenants rejected), the council is attempting to blackmail parents and local residents by telling them that building luxury flats on their children's playground is the only way they can raise the money to improve the school.

"While it is right that long overdue improvements to Hugh Myddelton School are to be made, it is surely wrong that our children should be expected to sacrifice their playground in order to pay for them."

05 August 2008 05:51