Acting on behalf of the mayor at a hearing on Wednesday (7 October), deputy mayor Jules Pipe ruled in favour of the 11-building redevelopment of a 1.4ha site bounded by Curtain Road, Worship Street and Holywell Road.

The application was called in six months ago in unusual circumstances after Hackney Council ignored its planning officers’ recommendation to refuse the scheme.

KPF’s proposal for Linea Properties – a joint venture between the Estate Office Shoreditch and HDG – includes a varied range of workplace typologies, including 65,000m² of offices and workspaces and 4,080m² of retail space in new and refurbished buildings.

The plans, which have been slightly scaled down since an original planning submission in late 2024, also feature 78 new homes, of which 35 per cent are earmarked as affordable, as well as new public realm, community spaces and 770m² for a community space.

The tallest building is 18 storeys – reduced from 19 – and the scheme also contains nearly 40 low-rise buildings of up to six storeys.

In his decision, Pipe said although the tallest building was located outside the area of Hackney allocated for tall buildings, he found the proposals acceptable given their accordance with other conditions of the London Plan.

Describing the designs as ‘high quality’, Pipe continued: ‘The development will also deliver new homes and an uplift in quality from the residential already on site … this would create a genuinely mixed-use development in accordance with the site allocation.’

City Hall called in the scheme in March following a surprise decision by Hackney Council’s planning committee, which voted to provisionally back the application despite planning officers recommending its approval.

That unprecedented outcome meant an official decision on the scheme was deferred and was set to return to committee at a later date for a formal approval. However, the mayor’s call-in meant City Hall became the decision maker. 

Despite the one-storey reduction and other amendments, Hackney planning officers called the application ‘an incompatible and obtrusive development’ which would harm the surrounding conservation area because of its ‘excessive scale and volume’. The officers also criticised the scheme’s viability and the sunlight access for half the proposed homes.

In response, supporters of the development and self-proclaimed ‘yimbys’ including consultancy and built environment research institute Create Streets, used social media to criticise the planning officers’ recommendation.

Commenting on this week’s decision, Create Streets wrote on X: ‘The Mayor of London has greenlit Shoreditch Works, delivering an important symbolic win for urban regeneration, jobs, beauty and new homes.

KPF’s submitted Shoreditch Works scheme (October 2025)

Source: WAX/KPF

‘Huge credit to Linea Properties Ltd for pushing this forward, and we dare to hope that we at Create Streets helped with our groundbreaking visual preference survey. This proved that the public overwhelmingly backs beautiful, dense design. Our research with DeltapollUK showed an undeniable 76-to-78 per cent public approval rating – demonstrating that the public support architecture that is public-friendly.’

A Linea Properties spokesperson said: ‘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.’

The existing site includes offices, homes, retail, including bars and cafés, and educational facilities (the Broadgate Nursery). Its building typologies are ‘varied in nature’ due to being heavily bombed during the Second World War, but include Victorian warehouses, terraces and post-war buildings.

Under the proposals, around half of the plot’s 40 existing low-rise buildings would be demolished. However, all heritage buildings in the South Shoreditch Conservation Area site would be ‘retained and refurbished or extended and repurposed’. These include the Grade II*-listed 91-101 Worship Street, and the Grade II-listed 103 and 105 Worship Street. Heritage specialist Richard Griffiths Architects is also working on the scheme.

Linea has proposed delivering the scheme in phases.

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