A public meeting is being held on Wednesday in the continuing battle to preserve London’s oldest canal from further encroachment by developers.

Campaigners lost a High Court battle to stop an 11-storey tower block of flats going up next to the Limehouse Cut that connects the Regent’s Canal and River Lea in East London.

Tower Hamlets council has been running a public consultation to get a conservation area declared for the rest of The Cut—fist opened in 1770.

A campaign launched two years ago by local historian Tom Ridge centred on trying to save the original 1920s Poplar Labour Exchange in Burdett Road, overlooking the Limehouse Cut, which was threatened with demolition.

But Trillium Property Group appealed against the council’s refusal to let them demolish it and against an earlier conservation order that had been ruled ‘out of time’ because there had been no previous public consultation. The developers won the case in February—then bulldozed the site.

The fight to stop further encroachment along the two-mile waterway continues with a six-week public consultation that ends on Sunday (May 29).

The public meeting is on Wednesday at the Town Hall in Mulberry Place, Clove Crescent, Blackwall, at 7pm. Deadline for comments is May 29 in writing to Tower Hamlets Conservation office or email conservation@towerhamlets.gov.uk.