Would you like to help secure the future of Dalston Eastern Curve Garden? Then please can you take a few minutes to read and respond to Hackney Council’s current public consultation, ‘Towards a Dalston Plan: Key Issues and Objectives’. The ‘Dalston Plan’ will be very important, as it will shape how this neighbourhood looks and feels over the coming years and inform how land in Dalston is used and developed, including the land that the Garden is attached to. You can find out more, see what other people have said so far and make your own responses here:
https://dalstonplan.commonplace.is
Hackney Council will host a drop-in information session at the Garden on Saturday 15 February 12-3pm where you can ask Council representatives about the ‘Dalston Plan’. We recommend that you hold off on completing the consultation questionnaire until you have had a chance to come along to this session if you can. If you can’t make it along, we will be hosting our own information session at the Garden within the next few weeks and you can email us any time at info@dalstongarden.org with any questions you have about the ‘Dalston Plan’ and how it might impact on the Garden.
The deadline for responding to the ‘Towards a Dalston Plan’ Consultation is Friday 13 March.
Despite the constant backdrop of uncertainly over its future, since opening in 2010, the Garden continues to thrive and this year we will be celebrating our 10th birthday, with a year long programme of events and activities, starting in July 2020.
The fact that the Garden has reached such a milestone, is in no small part thanks to the ongoing support of so many local residents and visitors. Many people took the time to write to Hackney Council during the last major consultation on the area in 2017. We were grateful that so many of you said how much you valued the Garden and that you wanted it to be made permanent. Thanks to that level of public support, it’s clear that Hackney Council have now recognised the important role that the Garden plays in Dalston. Isn’t it encouraging to know that sometimes taking part in consultations really can make a difference! We still have a way to go to ensure a good future for the Garden so we hope you will engage with this latest one.
We welcome the emphasis in the Dalston Plan Consultation on the need for more greenery and green spaces in Dalston as the area is so grey!
Within the consultation document and questionnaire, you will see that there are two sections which explicitly reference the Dalston Eastern Curve Garden:
https://dalstonplan.commonplace.is/…/green-and-open…/details
Objective 1 (this objective is divided into two questions)
and
https://dalstonplan.commonplace.is/…/buildings-obje…/details
Objective 2
We hope that you will ‘Strongly Agree’ with all of the objectives that are listed there.
The Consultation also invites you to make your own comments under each section. We will be making a Dalston Eastern Curve Garden response, where we will ask for a number of fundamental points to be reflected in the objectives in the ‘Dalston Plan’, in order to safeguard the future of the Garden:
1. That in addition to being permanent, the Garden should remain as an enclosed (ie no route through the Garden) and as a managed space.
2. That future developments on any sites that are attached to the Garden should be sensitive to the function and environment of the Garden and won’t cut out any more sunlight through building high.
We would ask you to bear these two points in mind when you are making your own responses.
Once this stage of the ‘Dalston Plan’ consultation is completed, Hackney Council intend to have a further consultation phase, in Summer 2020. Public responses to the current ‘Key Issues and Objectives’ phase will help inform the next stage. We will of course keep you updated.
Many thanks for your continued support for Dalston Eastern Curve Garden, we could not do this without you all!