In this week’s Nimby Watch, we’re off to the unspoilt green expanse of… London Fields, a park and neighbourhood in Hackney, East London.
Okay, where are we this week, then? We’re in London Fields, an area of East London named for the 30-ish acre park at its core. It’s an area that gentrified so long ago that the onetime hipsters around there settled down and had kids years ago.
So… there’s a park and it’s in London, an area with an acute housing shortage… are you going to try to convince it’s okay to build over green space again? Not this time, I promise – London Fields has existed since at least the 13th century, and has had the name since at least the 16th century. It’s got some legitimate heritage, and it’s a much-needed bit of community space. That’s all good.
Good. Then why are we here? Well, let me tell you a story about a pub in this area – it’s called Pub On The Park, it’s right at the edge of the park, and it’s got quite a nice deck where you can look out over the actual park while getting to sit in an actual seat with a proper draught beer.
This doesn’t sound like information you’ve gathered online. Do you have an interest to declare here? Busted. Yes, I’ve been to this pub more than once – including with the previous author of this column, who alerted me to what’s happening there – and it’s good. May we continue?
I’ve checked our ethics policy and yes, we can. So, one of the big attractions of Pub On The Park is its deck – and during the peak of Covid in 2020, that was the only bit of the pub anyone was allowed to use for a while, whatever the weather. As a result, they put a canopy and some Perspex side panels up so that you could sit on the deck when it was colder or raining.
Seems sensible enough. It does, doesn’t it? The pub decided having that outside space being usable for more of the year was good, so they tried to keep the canopy up permanently.
Keeping a bit of a timber roofing and some panels to an existing deck seems straightforward enough. Au contraire! Hackney council’s planning team decided that the structure was in breach of regulations and ordered the structures to be removed in June 2021. The pub appealed and lost, which took months more. The final order was issued in February 2022.
So… it took nearly two years to decide whether or not a pub could keep a roof it built during Covid over its outside space? Yep. And it only gets worse. The pub decided to put in a formal planning application in 2022 – once again, to build a small shelter over an existing outside deck – which was refused in 2023, on grounds relating to ‘the impact of the character and appearance of the host building and the area, and biodiversity’. It appealed again and lost again, getting its final refusal in July 2024, in part due to ‘insufficient ecological evidence’.
But… it’s a canopy. It’s a bloody canopy. Are they building it with depleted uranium, or something? Do locals really hate the idea? Apparently not! On both occasions, inspectors ‘acknowledged the level of support from the local community’ and ‘considered that the principle of the proposals may be acceptable’. They’re not against the idea of the canopy. They’re just waiting years to hear the perfect plans.
What’s the current state of play, then? The plucky team at Pub On The Park are trying a third time. They’ve put together a third proposal, supported by a local petition, to build a small shelter on their own outdoor area. Maybe this time it’ll work!
Look, I know you like to get melodramatic about these things, but there’s a role for a proper process – if this results in a better decision, isn’t it a good thing that there’s some hoops to jump through? Well. Let’s take a look at this application. The application form is 21 pages long, and that’s just the very beginning. It has 26 supporting documents attached to it. Among them is a 16-page proposal document prepared by the consultancy Magenta Planning. There is a six page long form on the Community Infrastructure Levy. There is a 14-page long biodiversity survey and report, prepared by Arbtech, a second consultancy. That’s in turn dwarfed by a 59-page long heritage assessment, produced by Cotswold Archaeology – a third consultancy. And there’s absolutely no guarantee that this application will even succeed.
Hang on, you’re exaggerating for dramatic effect here, surely? I am not. It’s a canopy. A f***ing canopy. That everyone thinks is a perfectly reasonable thing. And it’s taken five years, three planning applications, god knows how much expense, and now hundreds of pages of forms and three separate consultancies just to install something to stop the rain.
Okay, I can see why this radicalises people. This is actually insane, isn’t it? Yes. The Hoover Dam was built in less than five years. The Empire State Building took 13 months. The Golden Gate bridge was four years. And we can’t even approve a pub canopy in five years. This is how deep the insanity goes. This could genuinely become my Joker moment.
You really want that outdoor pint, don’t you? Well… yes. But at this point, I won’t enjoy it until someone finally does something to reform planning. And if the plans involve the word ‘consultation’ or ‘local concerns’, I refuse to be held responsible for my actions.
This week, Nimby Watch is in Winstanley, in the historical county of Lancashire. But, like certain other people in Winstanley right now, we’ve got our eyes on Westminster… Okay then, why are we in Winstanley. Where exactly is Winstanley, anyway? Well, if you’re part of the southern Westminster elite, you might say that Winstanley is […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in south-east London, just for a change… Alright then, where have you brought me this week? We’re in rapidly-gentrifying Peckham, in south-east London. Specifically, we’re by the Aylesham Centre, a shopping centre that has clearly seen better days, and they definitely weren’t recent. Hang on a second, haven’t we been […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Bushey, a town near Watford that’s been around since the Domesday Book… I see we’re in Watford. What brings us here, then? Hang on for a second, we’re in Bushey – it’s been its own town for 1,000 years, which is long enough that we shouldn’t just smush it […]
