Dave Hill has conducted an interview with Mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe, and he has posted a recording and transcript (which he’s finishing off) on his Clapton Pond Blog.
It makes fascinating listening. Here’s the bit that astonished me:
Dave Hill: “Can I just say, an ‘area of exemption’ - did this thing ever actually exist in the real… informally, or was it something that…
Jules Pipe: “No. No. It never existed, but…”
Dave Hill: “Sorry, can you say that again?”
Jules Pipe: “It never actually existed… but… the suggestion was printed in a council… I don’t know whether it was Hackney Today, I don’t know whether… somewhere there was consultation that went out and it got described as ‘areas of exception’, effectively saying…”
Dave Hill: “Exception?”
Jules Pipe: “Yeah. Effectively these streets would be excepted from, erm, a policy about no front dormers and they should have looked at it from a more sophisticated point of view. Actually that’s what the challenge I’ve laid down for them…”
Well, here’s where the idea came from - the Hackney Gazette, 21 May 2007:
And here’s a page from the consultation (download available here).
Anyway, some very good news emerges out of Dave’s interview. Firstly, it appears that every Hackney house with a front dormer has been identified. Secondly, Jules Pipe has said that it is too unsophisticated to make decisions based on whole streets - for example, one end of a street may be chock full of dormers, whilst the other is free of them. Therefore it would be sensible to allow front dormer extensions at one end of the street and not at the other. Thirdly, the Mayor has gone on the record that the same rules will apply across the whole borough.
If so, this is good news indeed. I have no problem with planning decisions that are made on the basis on architectural merit and impact. I have massive problems with applying lax planning regulations to streets that need protecting, simply because they happen to be in an area where other streets have been vandalised by inappropriate development, and where building upwards is the easiest, but most disastrous, solution to a very real problem of overcrowding.
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