London’s deputy mayor for planning has approved Shoreditch Works, a redevelopment of a 1.4-hectare block in south Shoreditch that includes an 18-storey tower, overruling the objections of Hackney Council’s own planning officers.
Jules Pipe, acting for Mayor Sadiq Khan, backed the scheme after a public hearing at City Hall on 7 October. The site is bounded by Curtain Road, Worship Street, Scrutton Street and Holywell Row, a few minutes’ walk north of Liverpool Street station.
The plans, drawn up by architects KPF for developer Linea Properties, include 78 homes, 35 per cent of them affordable. They also include about 65,000 square metres of offices and workspace, 4,080 square metres of shops and 770 square metres of community space, the Architects’ Journal reported.
“The development will also deliver new homes and an uplift in quality from the residential already on site,” Pipe said in his decision. He said it “would create a genuinely mixed-use development in accordance with the site allocation.”
Why City Hall made the decision
Hackney’s planning officers had recommended that the council refuse the scheme. They called it “an incompatible and obtrusive development” that would harm the South Shoreditch Conservation Area because of its “excessive scale and volume”.
At a planning sub-committee meeting on 4 February, councillors voted five to two against that recommendation, according to the council’s published record. The item was deferred, which left the application without a final decision.
City Hall called the application in during March, taking the decision out of Hackney’s hands. The Mayor of London can do this for large schemes that raise issues of strategic importance to the capital.
Pipe accepted that the tallest building sits outside the part of Hackney set aside for tall buildings. He said the scheme was acceptable because it met other policies in the London Plan, the mayor’s planning strategy for the city, and called the design “high quality”.
What happens to the existing buildings
The block is now made up of about 40 low-rise buildings, including Victorian warehouses, terraces and post-war blocks built after heavy wartime bombing. It holds offices, homes, bars, cafés and the Broadgate Nursery.
About half of those buildings would be demolished. Listed buildings would be kept and refurbished, including the Grade II* listed 91-101 Worship Street and the Grade II listed 103 and 105 Worship Street. Apart from the tower, most new buildings would rise no higher than six storeys.
The height was cut from 19 storeys to 18 after the first application in late 2024. Linea Properties is a joint venture between the Estate Office Shoreditch and the developer HDG, and plans to build the scheme in phases. No start date has been announced.
“We are delighted that the application has been approved and look forward to working with our local partners to deliver good growth for Shoreditch and London,” a Linea Properties spokesperson told the Architects’ Journal.
The urban design group Create Streets, which campaigned for the scheme, said on X that the decision was “an important symbolic win for urban regeneration, jobs, beauty and new homes”.