An award-winning housing development in Highbury has celebrated its fifth birthday with a party.

Highbury Gardens in Holloway Road invited all from the 119 flats to enjoy the party, which was also attended by Islington mayor Cllr Una O’Halloran and Highbury East’s Cllr Caroline Russell. Highbury Gardens was built on a former brownfield site by First Base and Southern Housing Group, with the government contributing £3million.

Sixty per cent of the homes are “affordable” or key worker homes, and 15pc are social housing. First Base made the news last week after the council won a landmark legal case against the company, which had tried to build 96 homes on a former Territorial Army Centre in Parkhurst Road with zero affordable housing.

Olaide Oboh of First Base said: “This scheme is evidence of how the public and private sector can collaborate to deliver a mixed tenure community.”