Wilmer Place scheme approved despite Abney Park Trust’s biodiversity concerns

Abney Park 

Flats and offices will be built on part of the Wilmer Place site that had been due to be swallowed up by the Sainsbury’s development which caused such controversy in Stoke Newington until the supermarket giant pulled out of the scheme two years ago.

The council’s planning committee has approved a scheme by Wilmer Place Ltd to construct a building reaching up to four storeys in height – despite concerns expressed by Abney Park Trust that the project could harm wildlife in the neighbouring cemetery nature reserve.

The site of the new building is currently the car park of a former carpet factory. It is situated next to what is one of the most sensitive sites for nature conservation in the borough.

Various adaptations have been included in the building plans, such as a green roof, bat boxes and “permeable” fencing.

But Shelagh Taylor, chair of Abney Park Trust, said she continued to have concerns about the scheme.

She said: “They [the developer] have made some concessions, but our concern about the negative effects on the biodiversity still remain.

“Our main concerns were that having buildings so close to the border with the cemetery will overshadow the part of the cemetery near the border, which will have implications for grave owners who want to visit graves in the area but also for biodiversity.”

She said this overshadowing would affect which plant species could grow near the boundary and that the residential nature of the development also meant dead wood used as a home by invertebrates could not now be left in situ for as long because it could be hazardous to occupants of the new flats.

However, she said the scheme was preferable to the Sainsbury’s plans for Wilmer Place and predicted the splitting up of the site would preclude any large supermarket development from sprouting up there in the future.

The Hackney Citizen has approached Dalton Warner Davis LLP, the agent for the developer, to request a comment but has not heard back from them.

Plans for a Sainsbury’s at Wilmer Place were approved by the Hackney Council’s planning committee in 2013. The supermarket giant later unexpectedly backed out of the deal, however, and there has been a question mark over the future of the site ever since. This has now been partially resolved thanks to the scheme approved last week, though it affects only the back of Wilmer Place and it is not known what will happen to the part bordering the high street.