Hackney Council

Thank you to everyone who has signed this petition or contacted us about the removal of this much-loved tree. It's absolutely a last resort, and something we spent months working with local residents to explore alternative options to. To everyone’s disappointment, we could not find a way to avoid removing this tree without huge delays to the construction of desperately needed genuinely affordable homes for social rent, and a complete redesign of the project. In total these new Berkeley Homes plans include the planting of 175 new trees as well as the equivalent of 29 tennis courts of new open spaces, including a new fully public park. It’s also why there will be 4,135sqm of biodiverse green and brown roofs, including vegetation and planting, as well as an energy centre to provide low-carbon heat for the entire estate and 1,060 new cycle parking spaces. Already, the regeneration of the estate has seen 425 new trees planted, 50 bird and bat boxes installed and the opening of the fantastic Woodberry Wetlands nature reserve to the public for the first time in nearly 200 years. This huge investment in green infrastructure will benefit generations of local people for long into the future. This is on top of the other ways we, as a Council, are responding to the climate emergency with Hackney’s biggest ever tree planting programme, with 35,000 new trees across the borough by 2022, including over 5,000 new street trees – as well as switching to 100% clean energy, reallocating roads for green spaces and supporting low-carbon transport.

The last thing Hackney Council wants to do is to remove leisure facilities from the Britannia site – in fact, we want to build a new leisure centre with better facilities. We also need to provide 1,650 new secondary school places by 2020. We have to make the most of the limited land we own, so we want to find out if it would be possible to build a new secondary school and new leisure centre on the Britannia site. The Council does not have the money to fund a new school and new leisure centre, so we would need to build housing too. The money we make from the housing would go directly into building a new leisure centre and school. We are currently carrying out a feasibility study to see what would be viable. The feasibility study will focus on options that involve keeping the existing leisure centre open whilst the new facilities are built. Britannia Leisure Centre’s facilities are old, reaching the end of their life and are not cost effective to operate. As an absolute minimum we would want a new leisure centre to include: a 25m main swimming pool, a new learner pool, an introduction to water area, a children’s soft play area, two squash courts, a 140 station fitness suite, a spinning studio, two exercise studios, a sports hall, five-a-side pitches and a café and toilets that can be used by park users as well. When we have the results of the feasibility study, we will share them with residents and leisure centre users and hold open drop-in sessions for people to find out more and feedback their initial thoughts. There would be further opportunities for people to have their say if plans progress. Find out more about the plans here: www.hackney.gov.uk/media/7397/Britannia-site-update/pdf/britannia-site-update