• THIS evening (Thursday) Camden’s planning committee will be making a decision on the planning application for an office block to be built at the rear of 1-3 Britannia Street, King’s Cross, WC1.

This is a misleading description of the site, which is in fact the courtyard of Derby Lodge, a Grade II-listed, high density five-storey residential building that wraps round the space.

It is described as a “keyhole site”. The only vehicular entrance is a narrow gate leading to the warehouse from Britannia Street between two residential properties. Yes, people live there too.

Why is it acceptable to construct an office building in the rear courtyard of a residential block of flats? Would the proposal be contemplated at all if the site lay in a more prosperous environment? If, say, the site was the rear courtyard space of an upmarket, expensive, private apartment block, rather than one owned by the council and a housing association.

Ordinary people feel huge distress when confronted with development proposals that appear to benefit others higher up the chain of influence, at the expense of their own quality of life.

The latest edition of the New Journal articulates residents’ anxiety about how much Camden Council actually considers the welfare of their tenants and leaseholders, in the wake of the mass evacuation of the Chalcots.

The blithe way in which planning officers deem this application to be suitable – when it is obvious that the development will be a nightmare for residents living only a few feet away – is perhaps symptomatic of a wider concern within the borough. Decision-makers must start remembering that residents matter.

DEBBIE RADCLIFFE
Bloomsbury Residents Action Group, Judd Street, WC1