Right to light artist, Suzi Malin, will fight on as planners approve Emmanuel School expansion

Published: 10 June, 2010
by JOSIE HINTON

A PORTRAIT artist has vowed to fight on after planners unanimously approved plans to expand a primary school next door to her West Hampstead studio.

Suzi Malin – whose bid to block the growth of Emmanuel School won support from painter David Hockney and BBC culture director Alan Yentob – says she will seek a judicial review after a planning committee gave the development the green light on Thursday night.

The scheme will see the heavily oversubscribed school, rated “outstanding” by Ofsted, re-built on a site currently taken by four houses and part of the Mill Lane Open Space. 

The plan will allow the school to double its intake and it will benefit from a new state-of-the-art building, sports facilities and a new playground.

But Ms Malin, who has lived in Mill Lane for 25 years, says the council has breached its own planning legislation by removing housing without replacing it and failing to properly consider alternative sites.

She said: “A private developer would never get away with a scheme like this. 

“This is a classic case of trying to squeeze too much on a small site. 

“The scheme takes away four perfectly good houses in an area of housing stress and open space will also be lost.”

She added that the development would take away her light and her ambience, making it impossible to work.

“This is the end of my studio,” she said. “I feel like someone has died and I am grieving. This decision is for all eternity and will permanently change the nature of West Hampstead.”

Her neighbour Heather Muggoch, a lawyer of Cavendish Mansions, said she was also considering mounting a legal challenge. 

She was prohibited from speaking at the meeting after missing the deadline to apply for permission to address the committee by an hour.

She said: “There has never been a consideration by the school that the site is not big enough. 

“They are not being honest about the fact that our open space is going to be used as a playground. Who is going to want to sit there when there are 200 children playing?”

During the meeting residents’ concerns over noise disturbance and loss of light were pitched against the need for more school places in West Hampstead. Currently there are around 90 applicants for 15 places at each year at Emmanuel. 

The development will allow the school to change from a half-form entry to a one-form entry.

John Ward, chair of governors at Emmanuel, said: “Although there is a net loss of housing we will be providing valuable school places at an outstanding school where there is an acute need.”

Camden’s new schools chief Councillor Heather Johnson added: “Camden faces the need for an additional 60 places per year and it is the duty of the local authority to provide those places. 

“This is a project that will give local people the best chance of attending a local school.”