• THERE is something seriously wrong with city planning in Britain, and Camden is home to many examples of how awful it is, with inappropriate developments, opposed by thousands during “consultation”, being subsequently rubber-stamped; not just by planning departments but the secretary of state often happy to approve awful schemes.

Camden offers “developers’ briefings” which is where things start to go wrong: “Sometimes the planning process is helped by allowing a developer to brief elected members about emerging planning proposals. These developer briefings will usually take place at an early stage in the pre-application process. The briefings are not formal council meetings. But they are run in a fair, transparent and consistent way and they follow set procedures.” Oh yeah? Transparent to whom? Not to our elected councillors it seems.

In many cases the first they hear of any plans are when the developers have already honed them, with the active help of Camden’s planners in our case.

By this time the developer has probably spent a considerable amount of time and money, so has a vested interest in pushing them though as fast as possible.

But the massive flaw in the system is lack of oversight. Our direct experiences come from fighting local developments at Swiss Cottage, including the appalling, now stalled, plans for the 100 Avenue Road site.

This has an enormous 24-storey skyscraper (with one fire exit, now illegal) and an awful pair of five- and seven-storey blocks looming over the tiny open space here, and dominating the library, a Grade II-listed building designed by Sir Basil Spence and the only building of note in the whole area.

The first most of our councillors knew of these plans was when they were presented for approval, with solid support from the planning department, despite tens of thousands of reasoned objections by local groups such as Save Swiss Cottage Action Group and the Belsize Residents’ Association.

If our councillors, or even local people, had heard of this appalling idea in the early stages, we could have stopped it in its tracks. The concept represents a massive over-development, utterly unsuitable to and destructive of the neighbourhood.

We could have saved the developers money too. Now, a decade after their plans were conceived, the site is empty while they pay for its security. More seriously, much of the “need” the developers claimed, has evaporated as a result of Covid-induced changes in how businesses operate, particularly in terms of office space, with down-sizing now the norm so reducing the demand for short-term accommodation of business people from overseas. Brexit has also had an impact, reducing our connections with our European neighbours.

What we need is a planning process which properly and formally involves local people from the start: we need a basic outline of what the developers are thinking about building. What for, for what purpose, and how big, being the key questions. Then, hopefully, a meaningful dialogue could ensue.

What are the key issues, how can they be mitigated, is the concept suitable for the area around the building, the local neighbourhood and what are the likely impacts on local services?

By this means we could get developments which enhance the areas we live in, not just the greed of some overseas developer who has absolutely no interest in anything except making money. And Essential Living (Swiss Cottage) Ltd, based in the Channel Islands, must now realise how stupid they were to ignore local organised and reasoned protests: after 10 years all they have is a hole in the ground; a sensible and appropriate building would now be generating money, all they are interested in.

MONIKA CARO, Chair
DAVID REED, Treasurer
Save Swiss Cottage
Action Group