Is Whitechapel turning into Docklands?

IT IS several years since the NHS decided to modernise the Royal London Hospital – triggering a wholesale redevelopment of the surrounding part of Whitechapel. But will the development bring improvements to the area?

The opportunity to improve Whitechapel wasn’t all the fault of the NHS: many factors coincided. The Council was warned that Mulberry Place, the posh office block in Docklands that the Lib-Dem Council found and Labour’s John Biggs took on as the Council’s home, was to be demolished. The Council needed a new home just as the NHS was selling off the historic front part of the old London Hospital.

Around the same time, the Post Office closed the Whitechapel office to the public, and Sainbury’s began to contemplate building a housing on top of and around its Whitechapel store. Were we going to see a co-ordinated redevelopment of the area, or was it going to be a free-for-all – anarchic redevelopment as had been done in Docklands, under the LDDC?

Mayor Lutfur Rahman favoured the “co-ordinated” approach. He set up a “Whitechapel Vision” group to co-ordinate the work – to “adopt a masterplanning approach”, as the planners would say. This brought together all the people and groups with an interest in the redevelopment – big companies, small businesses, market traders. The Group looked at all development issues – including how to spread out planning gain funds to get the best value for the community.

Labour’s John Biggs closed down the Vision group, and development in the area proceded piecemeal, without a masterplan. The area in which money and goods in kind provided as part of planning gain could be spent was increased. Again, oversight of the spending disappeared with the Vision Group, and much of the planning gain ended up being spent on short term projects with maintenance costs the Council had to pick up.

Now we are where we are. Individual developments have taken place or at least been agreed in the heart of Whitechapel, and there is little basis to bring them together again: you can’t co-ordinate the past. As the store of empty sites has dried up, thoughts have turned to demolishing buildings to create new sites for new developments.

This is the background to a decision which the Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee took last week. A two-storey building at 100 Cavell Street is to be torn down, and a massive new building is to take its place.

The biggest problem with the new building is how it will overshadow all the small, indigenous buildings around it. Cavell Street and nearby streets are primarily streets of houses. The new building will range fron five to nine stories: it will overshadow everything around it.

Planning permission for a “world class life sciences cluster on vacant plots next to the Royal London Hospital” was granted last October. The new building in Cavell Street is going to be a “purpose-built” space for life sciences, housing wet and dry lab space. Why do we need more space, given that we are already getting a “cluster” just yards away?

Some of the new building will be devoted to affordable workspaces for small and medium businesses which work in life sciences, with a discount of up to 50% for local people. How many such local businesses are there? The Ground Floor will be called a “Knowledge Centre” and will be used for seminars, education and exhibitions related to science, technology and engineering. Local community groups will be able to use it for science, technology, engineering and maths activities (how mny such groups are there?). There is no clear information on how much it will cost these community groups. Those community groups which currently use the existing building for meetings will either have to rebrand themselves – or go elsewhere.

Actually, it shouldn’t be too hard for these small businesses and community groups to find the funds to use the new Knowledge Centre, because the developers will be spending £200,000 on supporting STEM activities. It is such box-ticking, button-pressing, modern payments that help secure developers permission for their new buildings, it seems. There is no news on whether the developers will be paying compensation to those living in the houses in and around Cavell Street which will lose their sunlight and proportionate neighbourhoods when this building is built.

One element of the agreed planning gain is very welcome. The developers will contribute £300,000 towards the Council’s Education Maintenance Allowance and £300,000 towards the Counci’s University Bursary awards. This support from local businesses is well overdue. As well as making a financial contribution, businesses should be offering mentoring and work experience to those students they are supporting.

In the longer term, it remains to be seen whether this development is a one-off, or if we are beginning a process of oblitering the Whitechapel we know with new buildings that remind us of the empty towers of Docklands.

●See the planning application and webcast of the meeting:
Meeting of Strategic Development Committee 12.03.25

●Read more about it:
More stories about Whitechapel