more housing planned for north millfields

The Latham’s Yard development includes a small restaurant / café which the planners required to compensate for the loss of the much loved King's Head public house, which was then demolished. The café never opened and remains boarded up.

The developer, Taylor Wimpey, now wants to replace the café with more flats and has applied for planning permission from Hackney. The planning application can be found at: Planning Appl'n 2012/0628

We think the Council should refuse the application.

As a point of principle, we think that when developers are asked to provide some degree of mixed use to bring some vitality to acres of housing they should always be required to provide it; of else developers will see that they can get away with not providing any vitality, such as at Essex Wharf.

If a restaurant /café is not viable, there is surely a wide range of worthwhile community uses which the space could be put to.

Maybe we should come up with our own ideas and ask businesses / community enterprises to get involved.

•  Could is be a bicycle repair shop with a little coffee bar attached like in Broadway Market?
• Could it be the ‘village hall’?
• Could it be a nursery, or a one o’clock club?
• Could it be changing facilities and leave more space for a cafe at the Casimir Road entrance?

We do hope local community groups, including Millfields Users Group, see this as an issue which effects us all. If there is only room for one café in the area, and people think that is elsewhere in the park, that shouldn’t mean giving up valuable community space that’s already built and ready to occupy.