London music studios face eviction as housing drive consumes industrial land

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K-Town Studios, a rehearsal business in a former clothing warehouse in Kentish Town, is earmarked for demolition when work begins on the Camden Film Quarter in around 2028. Camden council approved the £1 billion project over the summer: almost 500 new homes alongside film and production studios and a cinema, billed as a "new creative neighbourhood" for London.

The founders, Martin Ashton and Paul Garfoot, set the business up in 2002 and moved into the Kentish Town warehouse in 2014; the studio now employs six people and works with local bands and international artists. Ashton says it serves as an essential creative hub for the area and beyond. The pair's future is uncertain.

The arithmetic behind the eviction runs citywide. Housing consultant Molior calculates that London needs 88,000 new homes a year, and industrial space covers about eight square miles of the capital. The government now allows developers to convert light industrial units into homes without specific permission to change their use, and the Greater London Authority's draft London Plan will, for the first time, encourage the reuse of "under-utilised or badly performing" industrial estates as housing. Over the past two decades the city has lost almost a quarter of its industrial space, the Centre for London calculates — a loss that has pushed up rents, squeezed out businesses and cost jobs.

Traditional industrial activity, from manufacturing and repair to warehousing, is worth more than £78 billion a year to London's economy, a figure that excludes the creative industries occupying the same buildings. Designer Paul Cocksedge, who rented a Victorian stable block in Hackney and built a body of work that drew national and international acclaim, was told shortly before the pandemic that his building was to be converted into luxury flats and that he would need to leave.

The Camden Film Quarter will include production studios of its own. Ashton says his rooms are full every day; the site is scheduled for demolition in around 2028.