Hackney New School planning application on Kingsland Basin

Hackney New School have submitted a planning application to build a new school building on a site spanning the former Travis Perkins site on Kingsland Road and the former Hackney Pirates building on Downham Road.

This picture shows the proposed development from Kingsland Road:

And this picture shows the proposed development from Kingsland Basin:

You can see the application in full on the Hackney Council website by clicking here.

Hackney New School is a Free School that earlier this year was given permission to open by the Department for Education. It is a secondary school which will have a music focus and aims to serve 600 pupils once at full capacity. The school will be sited on the single site on Kingsland Basin, and opens in September with a single year intake who will initially occupy the former Hackney Pirates building on Downham Road. The school then plan to build this new building on the Travis Perkins site to accommodate future intakes as well as rebuilding the Downham Road site. You can read more about the school on their website here.

Comments on the application can be submitted to Hackney Council's planning department until August 21st.

We have been contacted by a number of residents living around and next door to the proposed site with concerns about the size and scale of the proposed building. We'd be happy to hear from any other residents who wish to contact us about the application. Whilst we as councillors have no objection in principle to a school being built on the site, we have significant concerns about the size and scale of the proposed development, particularly the design of the Kingsland Road frontage and its relationship to the buildings that would immediately neighbour it to either side. We have submitted comments to planning officers stating this.