Britannia Leisure Centre: Campaigners accuse council of ‘painting rosy picture’ after new images unveiled

A newly unveiled impression of the school entrance. Image: Hackney Council

Hackney Council yesterday released images of the new school and homes in its plans for  Britannia Leisure Centre – but campaigners criticised it for “painting a rosy picture”.

The Town Hall wants to build a new leisure centre, 400 luxury flats, 81 council homes and a permanent place for City Academy secondary school on the site of the existing facility in Hoxton.

Campaign group Save Britannia Leisure Centre (SBLC) is fighting the proposals, and its petition has so far attracted over 4,000 signatures.

A mock-up of the new leisure centre. Image: Hackney Council

Alongside the new images, the council revealed more details about the school, which will be run by the City of London Academy Trust and provide “900 much-needed places and a 200-place sixth form”.

Eighty-nine per cent of students at the school, which opened at a temporary site in Haggerston last year, achieved five or more A*-C grades in their GCSEs.

The plans include purpose-built sports facilities and performance rooms, which the council says will also be available for community use.

Deputy Mayor Anntoinette Bramble said: “So many parents of young children in the area have told me how relieved they are that their child will be able to go to an outstanding school near to where they live.

“This is about providing excellent quality school places for local children, and we’re working closely with the school to make sure their permanent site provides them with the facilities they need to provide young people with a first class education.”

Pat Turnbull (centre) with fellow campaigners. Photograph: SBLC

But SBLC campaigner and former teacher Pat Turnbull accused the council of “painting a rosy picture and simply not talking about the many disadvantages of this scheme”.

Commenting on the school, she said: “A council map from 2014 shows that this area has one of the lowest proportions of under-18s to population in Hackney.

“There are already four secondary schools in the neighbourhood – Haggerston, the Bridge Academy, Hackney New School and, just over the border, City Academy Islington.

“The latter is run by the same City of London Academies Trust that wants to open the school on the Britannia site, and which runs the Hackney City Academy and wants to open another school in the north of the borough.

“The Trust is certainly empire-building in Hackney.

“I used to teach in Haringey and I found that the establishment of new schools in areas where they were not actually needed led to the decline of other established schools.”

She added: “As for the local community being able to use the academy’s facilities, the tenants of Woodberry Down estate were told the same thing when the new Skinners’ Academy was built there.

“It turned out the facilities were rarely available and expensive to hire.”

A model of the three proposed towers. Photograph: Pat Turnbull

The Britannia plans, which will be funded by the sale of the 400 private flats, include three new towers of 16, 19 and 25 storeys – one of which will house an early years facility for Shoreditch Park Primary School.

But Turnbull said the new images and other drawings available on the council’s website do not show the true impact of the towers: “In the model shown off at a recent planning meeting, the towers take a kind of transparent crystalline form which makes them as invisible as possible.

“But you can still see how huge they are, and how close they are to the school, the park and all the homes round about. You can see the shadow they cast across the school even in the model.”

Shady?: SBLC says drawings of the plans downplay the towers’ shadows. Image: Hackney Council

Turnbull also accused the council of using “sleight of hand” in its illustrations to minimise the appearance of shadows, adding: “As one of our campaign said, the only time you would ever see such a small shadow from such a huge building so close by would be at midday with the sun at its highest.”

The Town Hall is aiming to submit a planning application for the development next month. If successful, work on the school and the first residential block, which will include the council housing, is expected to start in summer 2019.

The council says residents “have helped shape the development by taking part in workshops and giving feedback”.

More drop-in events are taking place over the next week to give locals an opportunity to meet the architects, who will explain how community feedback has been incorporated into the proposals.

Hackney Mayor Philip Glanville, who last month traded barbs with SBLC campaigners following a face-to-face meeting, said: “In developing these vital community facilities it is important that the benefits for local people are felt as soon as possible, which is why the leisure centre and school are being built first.

“At the same time, we’ll start work on the affordable housing, which will be a mix of council homes for social rent and shared ownership, to help people struggling to get on the housing ladder.

“Shoreditch needs more school places and an excellent leisure centre with modern facilities to meet the needs of local residents.

“This scheme will raise the money needed to fill the black hole left by a lack of government funding, and provide much-needed social and affordable housing too.”

For more information about the plans and upcoming drop-in sessions, please visit Hackney Council’s Britannia webpage.

To find out more about the Save Britannia Leisure Centre campaign, please visit the group’s Facebook page or its Change.org petition.