Vortex latest

[HackneyE9]

Can anyone debrief me on what's going on with the old Vortex jazz club in Stoke Newington Church Street. :confused:

Was back in Hackney yesterday, and according to the Gazette, the evil landlord has just demolished the entire building without planning permission. :mad:

When I was last there at Xmas, the squatters were simply battling to stop him turning the building into a Starbucks - nothing about knocking the entire structure down.

Of course, that leaves him a free plot of land to do whatever he likes with.
:(

[Jazzz]

The Vortex escaped the demolition and moved to Dalston

http://www.vortexjf.org/vortex_jazz_club_history.htm

[HackneyE9]

I'm talking about the building, you wazzock.

[Divisive Cotton]

I think it was demolished months ago - will soon be a Starbucks. Probably.

[lang rabbie]

The landlord is playing the old "retrospective planning permisssion" game

http://hackney.greenparty.org.uk/news/94

What you have to remember when trying to hunt anything down on the Hackney website, once you've got over the problem that their website search engine does not appear to search the content of documents as well as html pages, is to get into the mindset of a faceless bureaucrat. Committee stuff is still organised in the way that a committee clerk of twenty years ago would do the filing - so the minutes of a meeting are with the agenda of the next meeting:

7.2.3 Question from Councillor Mischa Borris to the Cabinet Member for Regeneration and 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games
“When did Building Control first visit 139-141 Stoke Newington Church Street (ex-Vortex) to investigate a complaint that the building was being demolished in breach of planning consent and why are the two applications for retrospective consent Nos. 2007/0967 and 2007/0966, at the time of submitting this question, still not up on the Council website, nor is there a site notice displayed. I have been endeavouring to find this out from Regeneration and Planning since 16th May?”

7.2.3.1 Response by Cabinet Member for Regeneration and 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games
Building control have not visited. Cllr Linda Smith contacted the planning enforcement team at the beginning of April to alert the officers to some unauthorised demolition that was going on at the site and those officers promptly responded. The sequence of events that are required to lead towards regularising the situation one way or another are now underway and that process is going on.

7.2.3.2 Supplementary Question from Councillor Mischa Borris
Could you give me the exact date and secondly can you confirm the details of the planning applications which are up on the website and when they went up and why there was such a delay in putting them up?

7.2.3.3 Response by Cabinet Member for Regeneration and 2012 Olympic & Paralympic Games
The first contact to the planning enforcement team was on 3rd April 2007 and subsequent follow up visits followed from the 4th of April when the team first visited the site. The planning applications that are now validated are available on the website. The reasons for the delay relate to the checking of various documents that make up the planning application.

But I still can't find the planning applications on Hackney's own website.:mad: