Leader – Save Lea Marshes’ suspicions well founded

At this month’s rally on Hackney Marshes leaders of Save Lea Marshes had a message for opponents of the Town Hall’s car park plans: “Barrack your councillors.”

Hackney Council’s planning sub-committee is meeting on 9 September to consider the council’s own application for a new car park in East Marsh, and the pressure group aims to make its presence felt.

In fact, bizarrely, the East Marsh car park has already been built, making the meeting seem rather pointless.

The council initially told journalists it could not comment on a live planning application. Now its line is that the East Marsh car park is just a leftover bit of the temporary coach park built by the London Legacy Development Corporation before the Olympics – the cause of much anger at the time from Sunday League football players.

The council claims this car park is merely being ‘reinstated’ and says sports clubs support the plan, but to opponents the scheme sets yet another precedent for future building projects on Metropolitan Open Land.

A council press officer told the Hackney Citizen the planning subcommittee could technically still refuse to grant planning permission, meaning the already extant East Marsh car park would have to be removed.

Given that the car park is a ‘fact on the ground’ that seems unlikely.

Another large car park is also in the offing in North Marsh, and Save Lea Marshes fear this could lay the foundations for more private events like last year’s controversial BBC Radio 1 Hackney Weekend.

They are right to be suspicious.

The council has not ruled out applying to hold similar events again in future, and Save Lea Marshes is still smarting from a succession of schemes that have turned land on the Marshes – meant to be green space open to all – into fenced-off space engulfed  in tarmac.

Save Lea Marshes also points out, reasonably enough, that the Olympic legacy includes a multi-storey car park close to Hackney Marshes which has spare capacity.

At the very least the council should be looking at making more effective use of this rather than co-opting green space for the sake of a parking lot.