How the regeneration project will look

TOO big, and without enough council housing or public spaces – that’s the neighbourhood verdict on grandstand plans that will radically alter Queen’s Crescent.

Tonight (Thursday) councillors will be asked to run the rule over a council-led redevelop­ment of the West Kentish Town estate.

They are only allowed to make a decision based on planning merits but the system – replicated in every local authority, not just Camden – remains one part of the council making a call on another.

The scale of the application has prompted a raft of high level civic groups to call on the council to throw out their own designs.

A nine-strong coalition of civic groups, including The Queen’s Crescent Neighbourhood Forum, the West Kentish Town conservation area advisory committee, the Kentish Town Neighbourhood Forum, the Heath and Hampstead Society and Rhyl Primary School have all voiced serious objections to the project.

In the application, the council says the estate, dating from the 1960s, suffers from “overcrowding, poor thermal performance, dampness, antisocial behaviour, a lack of amenity and open space.”

In 2015, a survey showed tenants would be willing to have their homes redeveloped and over the next decade plans have been drawn up and voted on by tenants.

New plans will see the current three-storey homes razed to the ground and a series of new blocks built with new public areas and new through routes added.

Current tenants will be given the right to return once housing is completed.

Currently the site has 263 council-owned homes and 53 that were bought under the right to buy.

The scheme would see an extra new 540 homes added to the land.

It will be built over eight phases, with 40 per cent of all homes by floor areas deemed affordable, and all the affordable homes would be social rent.

The Queen’s Crescent Neighbourhood Forum told the New Journal the Town Hall had failed to respond to feedback and consultation had been a tick box exercise.

They said: “The council has not considered the redevelopment in the context of the wider area. The proposals will be damaging to existing communities, including residents of the estate, who will live with over-dense and overshadowed homes and external spaces.”

They say the project breaks planning laws with over a quarter of homes having windows that do not meet the minimum  requirements for daylight, that the mix of affordable homes is below an acceptable percentage, and the amount of public open space is also below guideline levels.

They added the scheme did not do anything to help with the continued loss of affordable work spaces and light industrial units, which the area has seen all away sharply in recent years.

The council’s housing chief, Councillor Nasrine Djemai, said: “If approved by the planning commit­tee, the redevelop­ment would replace out­dated homes with safe, modern, energy efficient, family-sized homes, comple­mented by neigh­bourhood improvements including new outdoor play areas and open spaces.

“A third of families living on the estate are currently in overcrowded conditions, so achieving planning consent to redevelop would be a great step towards building the safer and larger homes our residents need and rightly deserve.

“Over 90 per cent of residents voted in favour of redevelopment – a clear mandate for change and what our residents want.”