Haggerston Park campaigners condemn decision to approve temporary school

The disputed depot area of Haggerston Park. Photograph: Josh Loeb

“Disappointed” campaigners have accused planning officers of ignoring them following the decision to approve the building of a temporary school on disputed land at Haggerston Park.

The council’s planning committee last week gave the nod to proposals to house City Academy Shoreditch Park at the former depot while the school’s permanent site is being built.

The Town Hall has pledged to turn the space on Audrey Street into publicly accessible land once a second temporary school vacates the site in 2022. A consultation involving local residents will then be held to determine how to use the territory, but campaigners claim planning officials used this as an excuse to disregard their alternative vision for a BMX track and nature reserve.

A spokesman for Haggerston Park User Group said: “We’re disappointed the committee didn’t impose sufficiently strong safeguards to guarantee that the site will be returned to parkland within five years.

“It refused to even consider the carefully thought-out proposal from Haggerston Park users because officers said there would be a consultation in five years’ time. Last time they said that in 2007, it didn’t happen.”

The site was home to a school in 2007 before being put to use as a community garden and BMX storage facility.

The spokesman continued: “We’re particularly worried that the temporary school was given permission even though the application for a permanent school has not even been submitted.

“We recognise the importance of education in Hackney, but we don’t see why parks have to suffer as a result.

“City of London Academy Trust is a large, wealthy organisation that could perfectly well have paid for an alternative site for children who are now condemned to an overcrowded school with no playground for the next five years.”

The council’s own report found that the site is below the recommended size for the 560 children expected at the school, whose playground will be a patch of Astroturf to be shared with nearby Bridge Academy.

The Town Hall is under pressure to deliver an additional 1,650 secondary school places by 2021, and deputy mayor Anntoinette Bramble welcomed the planning committee’s decision as an “important step” towards achieving that target.

She said: “It would be simpler to allow central government to open free schools which do not reflect our borough’s needs. Instead, we’ve decided to tackle head on the challenges that a rapidly growing population and highly successful local education system bring.

“By working with the City of London Academy Trust, we can provide the state of the art secondary schools our residents expect and our young people deserve.

“These non-selective schools will enable us to ensure our children do not have to travel out of the borough to go to school, and can benefit from the remarkable achievements of Hackney’s schools, which see us constantly topping league tables.

“We are top in the country for progress at GCSE level; top for reading, writing and maths at Key Stage One and in the top five nationally at Key Stage Two. These are phenomenal results, and we want to make sure that future generations of Hackney residents benefit from this too.

“This temporary site is going to be absolutely key in helping us to deliver the rest of the school building programme and I look forward to welcoming the first students to use it.”

Construction of the new school is set to begin in the New Year.