Cable Street, Shadwell, Tower Hamlets

Campaign History

After a long locally-driven effort to increase access to genuinely affordable homes, on 22 March 2018, Shadwell campaigners joined with campaigners from Shadwell Citizens to gather at City Hall and hand in our bid for this site.

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On 18 June 2018 it was announced that we were successful with the bid! Since then we've working to form an agreement with Transport for London and the Greater London Authority, and put together our design team.

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"The Shadwell CLT campaign sprung from a group of local people who wanted more safe, warm, affordable homes in Shadwell – houses that would be truly affordable for people in the area, that would let us stay near our friends, our work and our families. Houses that we’d be proud to call homes.

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"The journey started in 2016 with a Walk for Affordable Housing around the local area, looking for unused land. One site we identified was just a short walk from St George’s in the East Church where the group. Next to the railway was a fenced off area of scrubland on the corner of Cannon Street Rd and Cable Street, owned by Transport for London.

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"Since then, we’ve worked with the London CLT to tailor a bid to build these homes, and we held a planning meeting to discuss the potential layout of the homes; and discuss people’s priorities for housing. We also held a stall in the nearby Watney Market, speaking to local people about their experiences of housing and their aspirations for a community land trust. We’re building on the success of the bid to talk with more people at our churches, our Mosque, and our schools about community land trusts, so that good quality housing is the reach of everyone in our community."

- Sarah-Emily Mutch, Cable Street Community Steering Group

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Community-led Design Process

In November 2018, we held a public meeting to draw up a Community Brief together, stating our vision for the site. We used this to tender for an architect, and representatives of the group shortlisted four architects to invite to a Choose the Architect event on 17 March 2019 at St George-in-the-East Church. Nearly fifty people cast their vote for the architect they wanted to work with to design these homes and the winner was Levitt Bernstein. 

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In the summer of 2020, we entered into a funding agreement with the Greater London Authority to develop proposals for the site.

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We had a successful planning pre-application meeting in February 2022. Development funding from the Greater London Authority is in place and discussions are ongoing with Transport for London regarding the land transfer, with a planning submission targeted for 2023.