The former Belsize fire station building

• CAMDEN’S planning committee is about to consider an application to remove the requirement for the Belsize fire station development to include two flats of affordable housing.

The application argues it has not been possible to place these two flats with any of the housing associations active locally, and so offers payment in lieu of this affordable housing instead.

Affordable housing is urgently needed, and in every community.

But the funds, should they be accepted, would pass into a general account and would be highly likely to be used elsewhere in the borough and not benefit those desperate to live in Belsize at all.

The danger is socially-mixed communities get eroded, and NW3 gets treated like a cash cow once again.

Camden already sits on a pile of £50million of collected affordable housing benefit money, and last year, it spent less than a tenth of the amount it brought in: building up its cash pile even more.

By contrast, while Westminster took in some £55million in similar payments last year, it spent £61million on affordable housing from this.

It is not right that the benefit to communities is not retained locally balancing societies nor is it right that the benefit is delayed to quite this extent.

CLLR STEVE ADAMS
Conservative, Belsize ward