A Paralympian, a rooftop bar and 1,200 objections: The fight to shape London Fields
Controversial plans come to Hackney's hippest neighbourhood
Morning — walk a few minutes east of Broadway Market and you’ll find yourself on Bocking Street, one of those east London strips where rooftop saunas sit next to pizza ovens and cocktail bars. But just beyond the buzz is a quieter patch: a part-vacant brownfield site that's now become the centre of an unusually tense development battle.
At the heart of the story is Dervis Konuralp — a Paralympic swimming medallist turned property developer — and a proposal for 38 flats, half of which are earmarked as affordable housing. Despite overwhelming approval from Hackney’s planning committee, the plans have sparked 1,200 objections, pulled in the borough’s rooftop nightlife venues, and drawn sharp questions about transparency and trust.
Today we’re publishing an investigation by writer Josh Taylor, who’s been digging into what this fight tells us — not just about London Fields, but about the broader battle lines of development in the capital.
His piece is below.
How an athlete turned developer sparked controversy in London Fields
By Josh Taylor
A stone’s throw East of Broadway Market sits Bocking Street, home to Netil Market, Netil360, Night Tales Loft, and Rooftop Saunas Hackney. On any given weekend (particularly if the sun is out), Bocking Street vibrates under the plods of hundreds of Tabi’s and Salomon’s as East Londoners flock like homing pigeons to the same few streets that orbit London Fields. Further to the eastern edge of Bocking Street, however, sits a brownfield site comprised of residential and commercial units, many of which are currently vacant. A far cry from the buzzy potential of its location.
Enter Dervis Konuralp. Konuralp is the director of Konebat Properties Ltd., the company which owns the majority of the brownfield site. The other partial owner is the London Borough of Hackney. Konuralp is an unlikely addition to an otherwise regular London story, insofar as he is a several time international swimming medallist in para-swimming classification S13. Born in 1980 to a Turkish Cypriot father and English mother who opened a corner shop on Mare Street, Konuralp is Hackney born-and-bred, his parents (after the success of their store) fast becoming Homes-Under-The-Hammer-style renovators of several properties on Mare Street.
After being diagnosed with Macular Dystrophy Stargardts, he took up competitive swimming, competing at the 1996 Paralympic Games aged only 15 years old. He achieved numerous international gold medals for GB and became, understandably, something of a poster boy for the 2012 Paralympic Games. A decade after those home games for which he was an official ambassador, Konuralp filed the aforementioned planning application for the aforementioned brownfield site on Bocking Street.
In the context of a London-wide housing crisis and high-rise, high-density - not to mention gentrifying - developments (such as the Aylesham Centre proposed by Berkeley Group in Peckham), Konuralp would have been forgiven for thinking this development would be relatively welcome. Add to this that, of the 38 residential units, 19 are proposed as affordable housing with 12 of these being social rent, and it is little surprise that councillors overwhelmingly approved the application at the planning sub-committee Meeting on March 5, 2025.
And yet, the plans were approved despite the submission of 1,200 objections to the council.
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