Below we track how we got to the point where Hackney Council is consulting local residents about its plans to re-develop 55 Morning Lane. This took many years of campaigning and is happening seven and a half years after Hackney Council bought the site from Tesco. There was no consultation at all before the Council’s purchase of the site and its deal with developer Hackney Walk Ltd. We created this timeline in response to the Council’s own timeline on its 55 Morning Lane webpage which leaves out key community actions, and distorts those it does include by putting them out of sequence and not explaining what each contributed.
2017
March – Hackney Council buy 55 Morning Lane from Tesco with £60 million of public money and enter into an Option Agreement with Hackney Walk Ltd. Hackney Walk Ltd is the company that developed the now-derelict ‘Fashion Hub’ on Morning Lane. The Option Agreement had no requirement for social housing and only a 20% requirement for ‘affordable’ housing. It offered Hackney Walk a 999-year lease on the site.
2019
Summer – Hackney Walk Ltd employ a PR firm to hold a ‘consultation’. 138 people take part, not all of them from Hackney. The results are never published.
October – 20+ people attend a Hackney Central ward forum at the Town Hall to express opposition to the developer’s plans. In the same month, Hackney Walk Ltd present their initial ideas for the site at a pre-planning meeting (image above). The Planning Committee say that the developers will need to do more consultation before submitting a full planning application.
2020
February – Morning Lane People’s Space (MOPS) launch with the first public meeting about the site attended by about 100 people and Hackney Mayor Phil Glanville. We also leaflet outside Tesco, and set up a Facebook page and a petition demanding at least 50% of any housing built on the site is council housing at social rent and that Hackney Council involve the community in their planning and build something that reflects residents’ needs.
Spring – MOPS hold an online public meeting during the COVID lockdown.
August to October – When the first lockdown ends, MOPS ignore a request from the Mayor of Hackney to wait for Hackney Walk Ltd to do further consultation and we carry out the first large-scale survey about the site, both online and via stalls outside Tesco (images below). About 1400 people take part. Alongside this we set up this website and Twitter and Instagram accounts and submit three Freedom of Information requests to the Council for information on its deal with Hackney Walk Ltd, all of which are rejected on grounds of commercial confidentiality.
November – MOPS hold an online public meeting at which we present the findings from our survey and to which the Mayor of Hackney and others respond.
December – We publish our findings in a report. As well as confirming residents’ demands for cheap public housing and for involvement in the plans for the site, our key finding is the importance of a big Tesco store as a community resource.
2021
Spring – MOPS leaflet outside Tesco to share the findings from our survey.
Autumn – We leaflet outside Tesco to update the community and invite them to join our demonstration.
October – MOPS hand our petition signed by nearly 3000 people to Hackney Mayor Phil Glanville and on the same day we hold a demonstration outside Hackney Town Hall against the Council’s plans.
2022
March – MOPS hold a public meeting, our first in-person meeting after COVID, to gather community ideas for the site ahead of the end of the Option Agreement with Hackney Walk Ltd. We also launch our YouTube channel with a video explaining the story so far. Days after our meeting, the Option Agreement formally ends.
Spring – The Council consult on their priorities for Hackney Central and the majority of those responding reject them. 14 out of the 93 people adding comments to a map of the area do so about 55 Morning Lane, nearly all supporting our demands to maintain a large supermarket on the site and to build public housing.
August – MOPS launch a second survey to develop a community vision for the site and we hold a public meeting to discuss next steps now that the Option Agreement has ended. Leafleting for this continues into the autumn and during the following Spring.
October – MOPS bring a deputation to full council about the site asking for transparency about the deal with Hackney Walk Ltd and Mayor Phil Glanville refuses this but commits to co-design.
2023
August – Hackney Council appoints Nicola Hudson to manage the re-development of 55 Morning Lane.
August to September – We leaflet outside Tesco to update residents and publicise our next public meeting about the site.
September – We hold a public meeting (image above) to share the results of our second survey and formulate clear demands for the Council following the appointment of a manager for the site.
October – We publish the results of our second survey which show three clear community priorities for any development: cheapness, localness and spaciousness.
2024
January to February – We leaflet outside Tesco to update the community, share findings from our second survey and publicise our next public meeting.
February – MOPS hold a public meeting (image below) to develop a collective understanding of co-design. The meeting identifies that the Council does not have the in-house expertise to do this and this leads to their decision to appoint community engagement consultants in August.
June – MOPS produce a short Manifesto summarising the community’s demands for the development and the planning process based on our years of engagement. We send this to the Council and share it online.
September to October – We hold a public meeting at which we introduce the community engagement consultants to residents. The key demand from local residents is for the Council to be open and transparent. When the Council fail to appoint the architects openly and transparently, MOPS resign from the Hackney Central Community Panel.
November to December – The Council appoints architects Levitt Bernstein to develop ideas for the site, and finally hold their first meeting to engage residents in their plans. We join this meeting which wastes a lot of time and money finding out what we already know from the MOPS research – that residents’ top priorities are to keep a big Tesco on the site and to build public housing there/
2025
January – The Council holds a second consultation meeting which underlines residents’ collective opposition to gentrification and our desire for places where everyone in Hackney can feel at home.
February to March – In the Council’s third consultation meeting, they present the ‘industry standard’ model for financial viability. This is a model which is used by developer’s to make huge profits at the expense of ordinary people. Many of those at the meeting ask critical questions such as: Why hasn’t the money the Council saves by taking people out of temporary accomodation been factored in? Can we take a longer term view so we can reflect the value of council housing to the community? After the questions, we were given pieces of foam to put on a map of the site. The foam pieces that represented private housing had positive scores and the foam pieces that represented ‘affordable housing’ and a big Teco had negative scores. We leafleted outside Tesco to share information on the Council’s consultation process and held a public meeting in March to organise for the Council’s final consultation meeting at the end of April. We also set out a response to the Council’s online survey about the site, showing how biased and misleading it is, and giving our advice on how to fill it in.
morninglanepeoplesspace.org 