Battle to save football pitches & open space at Finsbury Leisure Centre

Residents and football teams are fuming at plans to build over one of the few open spaces in inner city Islington.

Inside Islington, one of the most densely populated borough in England and Wales, and one with a major deficiency of open green space, the Finsbury Leisure Centre Open Space hosts football pitches and offers a unique, vital opportunity for residents to walk, sit, watch the players and enjoy being outdoors. The football pitches have over time become a key pillar of the community, offering a valuable space for local schools, clubs and the London 5 a-side league.

But if Islington Council get its way, such a space will not exist for much longer.

These images show the site currently, and how it would look with the development proposed by Islington Council.

The council’s current proposal for the site is to replace the slightly scruffy – but not dilapidated – leisure centre, and build four new high rise buildings on the playing pitches area of the site with room for 100 new council homes and then a 100 commercial flats to finance them. This meets Islington’s minimum for 50% of new residential properties to be genuinely affordable. The four new buildings would be of varying heights from 7 storeys to a maximum height of 20 storeys. The council’s proposal to mitigate the loss of the much loved football pitches is to propose 5-a-side pitches on top of the leisure centre; significantly these pitches will be smaller than the current ones on the site. They will also be a much less pleasant – and very different – experience for players, will not provide passers by with the enjoyment of watching and it may well be too difficult to use for for the schools which currently use the pitches.

CPRE London was alerted by the local campaign group EC1 voices to this threat to their local open, green space. While we strongly support increasing density where appropriate in London, we are extremely concerned that this proposed development would leave the current residents, and the many new residents, with even less open, green space.

We are now working with residents to lend assistance where we can.  There are numerous issues with the proposed plans and we and a volunteer law student are helping organise what looks set to be a major undertaking.

For example, we are helping with research; organising gathering of evidence; and contacting other organisations which may have their own concerns, to raise awareness and gather support.

If you would like to help

• Follow them on X / Twitter
• Visit the EC1 Voices website
• Sign their petition!
• Contact alice@cprelondon.org.uk or EC1 Voices via their website.