ANGEL ASSOCIATION, CHAIRMAN’S REPORT TO AGM 12 NOVEMBER 2025
This year we have supported Islington in Bloom, the Claremont Project in White Lion Street, the Sunday Club at St John the Evangelist Church. At the Association’s Social we are asking our members to support our local and excellent Young Actors’ Theatre. It’s important to do our bit to help local charities doing such good work.
We all want to live in a thriving and well managed neighbourhood and we are fortunate that the Angel area is such a place with a wide range of independent and corporate businesses, good transport connections, well served by our Council, and with an effective Business Improvement District body. Much voluntary and community effort adds to this good outcome, but nothing is assured. Management of traffic, cycles, longstanding empty buildings, care for our local canal network remain key concerns.
No further changes are currently planned to the current street closures and the arguments for and against have been well rehearsed. What does need careful management is the location of bike hangars with more being planned for our neighbourhood. These should not be obtrusively put right by people’s front doors when every street has gaps or flank walls where their location has much less adverse impact on homes and local amenity. We are also trying to determine from the Council how these hangars are used, how many of these do we actually need?
Local street works are also being planned, typically changing road lines and creating more pavement areas. Whilst some of this might be useful, the risks are that it adds to street clutter, more cycling on pavements, and poor design. We have made these points to our local Councillors and asked them to review the designs. Linked to this is the increasing problem of cycle parking, the proliferation of e-bikes and their random dumping by users makes pavements unsafe and does nothing for our amenity. We are discussing with our local Councillors how better arrangements with the bike businesses might bring some order to the current chaos.
We are still trying to establish an anti graffiti programme with Canal and River Trust; our towpath suffers from a great deal of graffiti. We hope to start with the popular area around City Road Lock (now being repaired) and the adjoining café. The towpath in this area is wide and has greatly benefitted from the large planters generously funded by local residents and managed in partnership with Hanover School. We think it’s important not to be over ambitious and to tackle this widespread graffiti problem in manageable sections.
Though the Angel area is thriving, there are longstanding empty buildings which drag our area down. One is the very large RBS building sitting in front of the busy Angel Tube station, empty for more than 5 years. We believe the building may have been bought by a hotel company, which would be a very good use, but little detailed information is available. At present the building’s long colonnade is boarded up to discourage rough sleeping. One other empty eyesore is the shop front area at the Islington Green/Essex Road corner. Here a long standing planning impasse between the owner and the Council about bringing the lower ground theatre area within the building into use, in accordance with the original planning agreement, have seemingly got nowhere. We keep pressing the Council on this and have also written to the building owners.
Meanwhile, as you will have seen, the remodelled large office building at the City Road/Upper Street corner is nearing completion. Let’s hope its letting programme is successful in reanimating this area.
We are glad that the Council responded to our and others’ concerns about the proposal not to close our local parks at night, they will continue to be closed. We regularly review local planning proposals and applications as well as licensing applications and make representations to the Council as necessary. We welcome your views on these and other local issues, do get in contact through our website. Our membership is growing and we benefit greatly from our relationships with key local organisations notably the Arlington Association and the Duncan Terrace Association. We are also greatly helped by the positive and constructive relationship with our local Councillors.
I should like to thank Geraldine Hackett, our Secretary, and our Committee for their commitment and input, and thanks to our Members for their support.
Eric Sorensen
Chairman, Angel Association.
Geraldine Hackett, Secretary www.angelassociation.org.uk