The Proposal

The Proposal

The site referred to as Wilmer Place is more properly referred to as the Wilmer Industrial Estate. This 0.5 hectare site is located in a Conservation Area on the corner of Stoke Newington Church Street and Stoke Newington High Street, beside Abney Park Cemetery, and is currently occupied by a private pay and display car park and a selection of buildings and extensions of 2, 3 and 4 stories in height. You can see excellent photos of the site at Wilmer Place – A Space for Stoke Newington.

The developer, Newmark Property Investments, has submitted a pre-planning document (known as a screening opinion) to Hackney Council in advance of a potential planning application to develop the Wilmer Place site. The screening opinion sets out why Newmark Property Investments feels that an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is not justified for this development and the council has agreed and decided that an EIA will not be necessary. You can view both of these documents for yourself here.

After a strong response from local residents, traders and councillors, the developers decided to redesign the proposal. 

The most significant items identified in the document are:

  • Building a supermarket with a retail area of 16,000 square feet, reduced from 24,000 square feet in the original proposal (by way of comparison, the proposed supermarket has about the same retail area as the existing Sainsbury's on Stamfod Hill)
  • Building 66 (an increase on the previously proposed 44) residential flats, of which a proportion will be affordable housing and family sized accommodation

In order for this development to happen as described it would be necessary to demolish 193 – 197 Stoke Newington High Street, buildings which lie within the Stoke Newington Conservation Area. One building would be demolished completely in order to make way for an entrance ramp to the under ground car park. The other buildings would be demolished but their facades would be retained.

The screening opinion goes on to very briefly discuss a range of  potential impacts (environmental, social and economic) before concluding that an EIA is not required. It is this conclusion that the council has now endorsed.

Having completed the initial consultation, the developer has released limited information via their website. We will be assessing the claims made about the development along with any other pieces of information which we can get hold of and will be building up the information on these pages as information appears. Below is a summary of where things stand at the moment:

A description of the issues associated with the revised and original development plans can be found here.