Mount Pleasant flats scheme 'is attack on historic district'

Royal Mail’s plan to build hundreds of apartments on its Mount Pleasant site have been condemned as “an assault” on the neighbourhood.

Local activists said the scheme proved privatisation had turned the company into a “cash cow for its corporate shareholders”.

Consideration of the project, on the Islington and Camden border, was taken over by Boris Johnson last month to speed up the planning process. Islington Green Party member Michael Coffey said: “The scheme is totally out of scale with the local area, the architecture is mediocre, and investment in local infrastructure minimal.

“This is more than just a missed opportunity to create a thriving public housing development. It’s an assault on historic Clerkenwell.” The scheme will have 683 homes plus shops, offices, restaurants and public space over one million square feet.

In a letter to Camden and Islington councils, Thomas Heatherwick, designer of the new “Boris bus” and proposed Thames Garden Bridge, called the plan “empty, cynical and vacuous” and “downright lazy”.