Protests over bulldozers at end of Holloway garden

Published: 17 September, 2010
by PETER GRUNER

PAT Tuson looks across her pretty balcony, festooned with plants and flowers, onto Islington’s biggest demolition site.

She and her partner, Chris Ashby, both retired, were forced to endure the construction of the new Arsenal Emirates Stadium four years ago, with all the associated noise, dust and disturbance.

Now, the bulldozers are back and demolition and construction are starting all over again – this time at the end of their back garden in Bryantwood Road, Holloway.

Part of the agreement between the football club and Islington Council is that Arsenal should provide 530 new homes – half of them affordable – plus a commercial development and a community sports centre, on a two-acre former industrial site in Queensland Road, next door to the stadium.

A mere six-foot high steel wall, put up by the contractors, separates Ms Tuson’s garden from the demolition site, providing little if any privacy.

She will soon, along with up to 100 other residents, have to temporarily give up a third of her back garden – six-foot wide and 17-foot across – to contractors working on behalf of Islington Keir. Plants and trees will have to be uprooted and possibly replanted.

Yet she is not entitled to a penny in compensation despite the fact that the work will continue yards from her home for up to a year.

“We thought a six-foot screen would be sufficient,” she said this week. “But now it’s up and the work has begun we realise it is totally inadequate for the scale of the development.

“As for compensation, we are apparently not entitled to any. But you would have thought that, this being a multi-million pound scheme backed by one of the biggest football clubs in the world, we’d get something to cover all the nuisance as a goodwill gesture.”

Noise is already becoming a problem as derelict buildings are demolished. “One morning, noise and vibrations were so bad we started to think about taking ornaments off the shelf,” she said.

Matters came to a head on Friday when a bulldozer smashed down a neighbour’s boundary wall, leaving a 20-foot space. 

Ed Allen, a retired carpenter who lives in the same road, said he has to put up with the noise of machines and demolition. 

His 20-foot garden wall, with hanging plants and Russian vine, which backed onto a former workshop, is due to be demolished and replaced with a ten-foot wall. “They are not replacing like for like,” he said. “And consultation has been the minimum required under the planning process.”

Unlike Ms Tuson, he has received compensation for giving up a third of his garden because he has a party wall agreement, but says the money has been mostly spent on his legal fees.

“It’s not just the construction site,” he added. “We suffer from all the problems associated with a 60,000-seater stadium. We get fans’ coaches parked nearby and our road is closed on match days. We get helicopters buzzing overhead and all the noise of the game. Remember, we were mostly all living here quietly long before Arsenal arrived.”

Former Green councillor Katie Dawson is “appalled” with the way the residents have been treated. “They should all be entitled to compensation at the very least because many of them will not be able to use their gardens for up to a year,” she said. “It means anything they have got planted will have to be removed. On top of that will be the dust, noise and disturbance.

“It is so mean-spirited of the developer, who stands to earn millions from this scheme, not to ensure that residents are compensated.”

Councillor Paul Convery, the Town Hall’s Labour environment chief, said: “Islington Council’s enforcement team are investigating a resident’s concerns about the breaching of a boundary wall between her house and the demolition site in Queensland Road.

“If, following a site visit this week, there’s been a breach of planning conditions, we’ll consider whether enforcement action is necessary.”