Hackney council had opposed the scheme prior to call-in earlier this year
The mayor of London has approved KPF’s plans to redevelop a 1.4ha site on the edge of the City of London following a call-in process.
The Shoreditch Works scheme, designed for Linea Properties, is set to provide 65,000sq m of office space and 78 homes on land currently occupied by more than 30 separate buildings.
Located on the southern edge of Shoreditch, it is being billed as a new workspace hub linking the City with the Old Street Roundabout tech cluster with the scheme spanning 11 buildings including a 19-storey office tower.
The decision is an important step forward following a protracted planning process for the scheme since it was first submitted in October 2024.
Hackney council’s planning committee deferred a decision on the scheme in February this year due to concerns over a lack of affordable workspace, which councillors said had not been justified by the applicant’s viability assessments.
Planning committee members also argued that the scheme would harm the character of the South Shoreditch Conservation Area and the wider townscape, including the setting of several listed buildings.
It was scheduled to return to the committee in March with a recommendation for refusal from planning officers but was called in by the mayor of London two days before the committee hearing following a request by the scheme’s planning consultant Montagu Evans.
The Greater London Authority (GLA) then backed the application, arguing it would have a significant impact on employment space and housing delivery at a strategic site on the boundary between Shoreditch and the City of London.
Deputy mayor Jules Pipe visited the site on 23 September with the GLA, Transport for London, representatives from Hackney council and the applicant team with the GLA issuing its approval of the scheme last week.
While the GLA admitted the plans would result in a “low to high level harm” to surrounding heritage sites, it said this would be outweighed by public benefits including a 35% share of affordable housing.
It also praised the scheme’s “high quality design” and the proposal to open up a currently inaccessible site to provide around 3,600 sq m of new public realm.
The decision was welcomed by Nicholas Boys Smith, whose firm Create Streets provided a visual preference survey for the scheme. Boys Smith called the GLA’s approval “an important symbolic win for urban regeneration, jobs, beauty and new homes”.
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