Deliveries by articulated lorries now planned for Church Street

After the success of the zombie march we've been working out our next steps and there will be lots to crack on with in the next few weeks. We also have reason to believe that the planning application will be submitted this month so the clock is ticking and things are going to get busy.

But first things first, the developers met with the Stoke Newington Conservation Areas Advisory Committee a while back and a set of boards was shown to the group, including some new ones not shown at the consultation.

Possibly the most significant change is the adoption of articulated lorries for deliveries rather than the rigid lorries we were assured would be doing the deliveries at the consultation.  

As predicted early on in the Stokey Local campaign, there is clearly insufficient space for rigid vehicles to manoeuvre in Wilmer Place, so the developers have been forced into changing their plans to using articulated vehicles. Indeed they haven't even bothered to update their 'consultation' website which still states that "deliveries will be undertaken by an 11 metre rigid delivery vehicle".

The plots on the board show the lories approaching the site from the west end of Church Street and exiting the site via the heavily congested east end of Church Street so if this development were to go ahead, we would have 6 to 8 articulated heavy goods vehicles pounding the length of Church Street on a daily basis. 

Heavy goods vehicles are the cause of half of London's fatal cycle accidents and one tenth of London's fatal pedestrian accidents although they only account for 5% of London's traffic. These vehicles are dangerous, articulated lorries particularly so, and this is just one of many examples of why this development is deeply inappropriate for Stoke Newington.