Robust opposition to large developments is to be expected at times, but few disputes have been as acrimonious as the battle over British Land’s proposals to redevelop a network of semi-derelict streets on the edge of the City of London.

The principally commercial scheme is located on the edge of Spitalfields on the border with the City of London and, nearly 10 years after the first planning application was submitted, it is being readied for the first occupiers.

Called Blossom Street during planning and now named Norton Folgate, the scheme is a collection of sensitively and painstakingly restored Georgian, Victorian and Edwardian buildings with a couple of new-build, medium-rise blocks set back from the street edge at the northern end of the site next to the railway lines running into Liverpool Street station.