At a meeting last night (4 February), councillors on the east London borough’s planning committee voted, by five votes to two, against the planning officers’ recommendation to throw out the application.
Officers said the application to redevelop a 1.4ha site bounded by Curtain Road, Worship Street and Holywell Road should be refused, branding KPF’s proposals as ‘an incompatible and obtrusive development’.
The unprecedented outcome means a formal decision on the scheme for Linea Properties, a joint venture between the Estate Office Shoreditch and HDG, has been deferred and will likely return to the committee at a later date.
KPF’s proposal includes a varied range of workplace typologies, including 65,000m² of offices and workspaces and 4,075m² of retail space in new and refurbished buildings.
The plans, which have been slightly scaled down since an original planning submission in late 2024, also feature 78 new homes, of which 35 per cent are earmarked as affordable, as well as new public realm, community spaces and 770m² for a community space.
The tallest building is 18 storeys – reduced from 19 – while the scheme also contains nearly 40 low-rise buildings of up to six storeys.
Despite the one-storey reduction, the planning officers said the ‘design, scale and positioning’ of the KPF scheme would harm the surrounding conservation area and that ‘the excessive scale and volume of the development would adversely impact the microclimate of the onsite and adjacent public realm and significantly overshadow proposed residential accommodation’.
The officers also criticised the scheme’s viability of the scheme and the sunlight access for half the proposed homes. In particular, because ‘the proposed development would neither reprovide the maximum economically feasible amount of low cost employment floorspace nor a minimum of 10 per cent of the gross new employment [affordable] floorspace’.
They added: ‘The submitted daylight/sunlight report shows that only 54 per cent of the proposed rooms would meet the BRE daylight targets.’
In response, supporters of the development and self-proclaimed ‘yimbys’ used social media to criticise the planning officers for recommending the scheme’s refusal.
Before the committee meeting, consultancy and built environment research institute Create Streets had carried out a review of the Shoreditch Works development, commissioned and paid for by developer Linea Properties. The report praised the proposal’s ‘considerable merits’.
Create Streets said on X: ‘Shoreditch Works is not about “whether to build”, but how London grows well. Our critical-friend review concludes [the scheme] meaningfully improves on what is there now, repairing the street pattern, adding active ground floors and replacing poor-quality, inward-looking blocks with something more civic, legible and useful.’
Many of the scheme’s supporters attended the planning committee meeting to voice support for the proposals. According to social media posts, this included representatives of Create Streets and the Britain Remade think tank.
A Linea Properties spokesperson said: ‘We are pleased that the committee voted to reject the officer’s recommendation for refusal. There is clearly strong support from the councillors and the public to approve the scheme, and we hope for a swift resolution to approve at the next committee.’
Last year, a Linea spokesperson described the proposal as ‘a significant milestone for Shoreditch, Hackney and London. Shoreditch Works has a clear proposition: local roots; global impact.
‘We want to harness the excess of creativity and innovation in the people and businesses of Hackney and provide a platform for that local talent to have a positive impact on the world. We look forward to working with our partners, Hackney Council and the local community, to bring Shoreditch Works to life.’
The existing site includes offices, homes, retail, including bars and cafés, and educational facilities (the Broadgate Nursery), in building typologies that are ‘varied in nature’ due to being heavily bombed during the Second World War, but include Victorian warehouses, terraces and post-war buildings.
Under the proposals, around half of the plot’s 40 existing low-rise buildings would be demolished. However, all heritage buildings in the South Shoreditch Conservation Area site would be ‘retained and refurbished or extended and repurposed’. These include the Grade II*-listed 91-101 Worship Street, and the Grade II-listed 103 and 105 Worship Street. Heritage specialist Richard Griffiths Architects is also working on the scheme.
Linea has proposed delivering the scheme in phases.
KPF was contacted for comment.