Campaigners, developers and Tower Hamlets Council all made their cases as the Brick Lane planning inquiry got under way.
The inquiry will determine applications to redevelop three sites on and around Brick Lane, after property owner Truman Estates and Zeloof LLP appealed to the government’s Planning Inspectorate to decide whether they should go ahead.
The Save Brick Lane Campaign, which opposes the plans, say they “fail to reflect local wants and needs” and don’t provide enough housing.
The largest of the three proposals would demolish several buildings at the Truman’s Brewery site between Brick Lane and Spital Street, as well as a ‘cash and carry’ in Spital Street.
In their place, it would build five new buildings with offices, 44 homes, a restaurant, a cinema, a supermarket and a market.
Another would involve constructing an office building of up to six storeys with a ground-floor market at Ely’s Yard, to the west of Brick Lane.
To the west of that site, in Grey Eagle Street, Truman Estates also wants to demolish a derelict building and replace it with a data centre.
Truman Estates appealed to the Planning Inspectorate to determine the applications in June, arguing that the council had failed to make a decision on time.
Councillors then voted to oppose the applications in July.
On the opening day of the hearing on Tuesday, Save Brick Lane Campaign’s barrister Flora Curtis warned of the redevelopment’s impact on Brick Lane’s heritage and community.
She spoke of the “potential that the development proposals have to erode Brick Lane’s distinctive local culture, particularly that of the prominent local Bangladeshi community and negatively impact on local businesses”.
Curtis said the campaign would argue that “the development will fail to advance equality of opportunity between the Bangladeshi community and others, and will fail to foster good relations between the Bangladeshi community and others”.
She also said the new business and workspaces would be “unlikely to benefit the local community” as much as Truman Estates claims. Curtis said this meant the proposal “fails to reflect local wants and needs”.
Truman Estates’ barrister Russel Harris KC said it is “unreasonable” to demand that the main brewery site should focus on homes.
Harris said constructing “workspace-led, town centre type uses” would match the existing type of building on site.
He noted that this matched the council’s current Local Plan – which sets out its planning policies across the borough – and was supported by council planning officers.
Harris accepted that there is a “colossal” housing crisis in London. But he said: “Such a crisis does and cannot mean that housing automatically becomes a preferred use on any site in London, ousting any other use.”
On Ely’s Yard, Harris said the planned new building would fill a “void” in the conservation area with a new market space and “flexible, Brick Lane-type workspace”.
On the data centre, Harris said the current building it would replace is “derelict and harmful” to the heritage area. He said there was an “urgent national need for data centres of this type”.
The council’s barrister Richard Wald KC said Truman Estates’ appeal seemed “driven by a desire to progress the application” before the council could adopt its new draft Local Plan, which seeks housing on the brewery site.
He said two of the proposed new office buildings would “create an overly monolithic and overbearing frontage” on to the Allen Gardens park.
Wald also said it would “fail to optimise housing delivery on a strategically significant brownfield site”.
He said that a “large data centre is the last thing” that Grey Eagle Street needs, arguing that it would create low footfall and have a blank frontage.
And he said the proposed building on Ely’s Yard would have an overdominant form, particularly when considered alongside the proposed data centre next door.
The inquiry is set to run until Friday, 31st October, with a decision expected on or before Wednesday, 9th December.
