Plans for Haggerston Park temporary school leave residents fuming

The proposed site. Photograph: Hackney Council

Haggerston Park users are up in arms over council plans to turn part of it into a “temporary” school for six years.

Hackney Council wants to stick a four-storey portakabin complex on the site of the BMX track and community orchard, next to Sebright School.

The demountable buildings will provide 540 school places until a permanent building on the former Britannia Leisure site on Hyde Road is completed in 2022.

Furious members of the community orchard project, whose gardening space is set to be bulldozed, held an open day on 14 June.

“The mayor is inaccurately insinuating that the space is not used and not cared for by locals,” said Michael Smythe, a local resident who has planted a raised bed in the yard.

BMX Hackney and the charity Access Sport also use the yard to hold sports sessions for over 100 children every week.

The council says the land does not belong to the park. It says the asphalt-covered depot site has been used to house a temporary school before, when the Bridge Academy was being built 10 years ago.

Orchard project members at the Haggerston Park open day on 14 June

Hackney Mayor Jules Pipe said in an email to a resident: “As far as anyone is aware, this particular depot has possibly never even been public green space since Haggerston Park was created after the Second World War on the site of terraced streets and a gas works.

“Whilst it may be desirable in the longer term to incorporate the depot into the park, ensuring that there are enough school places for a rapidly growing population must surely take precedence.”

But in a letter to the mayor, Fiona Banner, the chair of the Haggerston Park User Group, insisted the site “is parkland and it should permanently remain parkland”.

“The park yard is legally open space – officially within a special site of nature conservation and a Conservation Area since 2009. It is contrary to existing council policy to develop it. There are council documents which specifically call for protection of this site, which is far too small for its proposed use,” she said.

She added: “It was with great difficulty that we managed to gain access to the yard four years ago – it was kept locked and unused for a long time after the Bridge Academy portakabins were dismantled in 2008, which is why we are unconvinced by promises to return it to parkland after the current attempt to remove it again from public use.”

The land sits in Hackney Road Conservation Area and is a designated site of importance for nature conservation.

Cllr Anntoinette Bramble, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, said: “This is the latest stage of our exciting and ambitious project to secure the school places we need to ensure we can provide local schools for local children.

“This programme has been ongoing for over a decade and has seen a number of new academies open and existing schools rebuilt, refurbished and expanded. The next phase has had to be fast tracked following the withdrawal of Department for Education approval for a free school last year, which means that instead of the anticipated one extra school, we now need to build two.

“Using the former park’s depot means we can ensure high quality school places while we build the permanent schools.”