Camden Town is ‘not safe’

• I HAPPENED to walk down the canal into Camden at 7pm on Saturday. I observed the following things:

Drinking and smoking on the towpath has moved down from the area by the lock by Kentish Town Road and the steps up to Sainsbury’s car park and is now on the towpath near the Pirate Castle.

The area where the drinking and smoking used to occur is fenced off and housing is being built there, right up to the towpath.

There were bins overflowing with food waste and rubbish and the rats that are present on the towpath no doubt contaminate the area where the people sit on the ground.

The bridge over the main road between the lock market and these new housing developments were being monopolised by gangs of drug dealers and there was no visible police presence in the area.

There are lots of security staff on the doors of individual premises but no police patrols. Public toilets were closed and toilets that should have been accessible in some places were not.

Many of the shops on the road from the lock market to the tube station are identical and mainly selling rubbish with a few notable exceptions.

I saw a party of inebriated men in their 50s or 60s running into the path of oncoming traffic and thumping the roofs of vehicles that narrowly missed them before piling into a couple of pubs.

The pubs in Camden generally were full to overflowing. When I got to the bus stop it was smeared with human excrement.

I am writing this letter to open up a discussion. Some of what I’ve noted could be a cause for celebration, if you own a pub or are a property developer.

But whose interests are best being served by this apparent chaos? It doesn’t strike me that Camden is a tourist-friendly or safe area at 7pm on a spring Saturday.

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