MOTH CLUB is facing an existential threat because Hackney Council is considering approval of a residential development next door under delegated authority – denying the venue and its community a public planning hearing despite more than 25,000 objections.

The Council has sidelined the Agent of Change principle, ignored expert evidence, and withheld a key acoustic report from an FOI request while relying on assessments that independent specialists describe as “useless”. For almost a year, MOTH Club and MVT have struggled to achieve meaningful engagement from planning officers, even after raising serious concerns about flawed reports, contradictory information, and failures in the consultation process.

If Hackney side-steps national policy here, it sets a catastrophic precedent: any grassroots venue in the UK could be placed in the same position by developers who choose not to mitigate noise. This isn’t just a MOTH Club issue. It’s a test of whether planning protections for cultural spaces have any real weight.

Add your voice by signing the petition HERE!