I have kindly been alerted to the fact that – very surprisingly – Tower Hamlets has decided to turn down planning permission for the redevelopment of the Genesis Cinema (see Comments).

Tyrone Walker-Hebborn who owns the cinema and runs it very successfully as a local independent cinema has claimed that, since COVID, audiences have meant that he has run it at a loss. The only alternative was to redevelop the site with a bigger building mostly devoted to student accommodation, with a new smaller cinema in the basement. The new building would have dwarfed its surroundings, particularly the charming Bellevue Place which lies immediately behind what used to be Wickhams Department Store and immediately adjacent to the proposed new tower block.

So, the question was: was Tyrone Walker-Hebborn a cineaste making efforts to protect a local amenity ? Or was he a property developer maximising the development potential of a building he owned to the detriment of the local neighbourhood ?

Surely the answer to this quandary should have been, might still be, to make more of an effort to consult the local community, to design it with more of the character of a civic amenity and less as a vast rabbit hutch of poky student rooms.