Impression of how the One Museum Street/Selkirk House development could look

• I MUST take issue with the Simten spokesperson quoted in your report (It’s decision time in skyscraper saga that ‘will change face of Bloomsbury’, November 9), as saying that, “through the careful restoration of seven buildings on the site we are able to enhance the Bloomsbury conservation area, deliver 50 per cent affordable housing on the new homes and turn an empty, redundant hotel and car park into a sustainable new employment space for over 1,600 people.”

Upton Sinclair’s comment that, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”, seems particularly apt here.

The conservation area will not be enhanced by the demolition of the old stables at West Central Street, a building which makes a substantial contribution to the area, and its replacement with a four- to five-storey block which is completely out of sympathy with the scale and order of the carefully designed Victorian structures, and which will cast the existing buildings into shadow.

It will not be enhanced by a 74-metre high, grossly bulky and ungainly, tower which will dominate both the adjacent listed buildings and the Grade I buildings further afield; and rob its neighbours of daylight.

The claims about housing, too, are overstated as 50 per cent of not very much is still not very much.

The spokesperson fails to mention that 26 existing dwellings will be demolished to make way for the development so there will be a net gain of only 18.

They fail to mention that the developer is ignoring the policy requirement to maintain the HMO, houses in multiple occupation, provision on the site which provides much-needed accommodation for low-earners.

They conspicuously fail to own up to the fact that the reason the hotel and all the other buildings on the site are empty is a decision of the developers and not because the buildings are redundant.

The Travelodge was a profitable concern and the company would have wished to continue operating the hotel from the site. Indeed they are actively seeking opportunities for expansion in the area.

So, far from enhancing and bringing new life into the area, the developers have stifled economic activity on the site for the past four years and, if planning permission is granted, the area will be a building site for a further six years, and therefore not economically productive for a decade.

If a sensible retrofit approach was adopted this area could be rescued from dereliction and these buildings could be brought back into use within a couple of years.

The developers have a cavalier attitude towards national, London, and Camden’s own policies; they don’t seem to think that they apply to them and sadly the planning officers appear to regard them as dispensable too.

Has it really come to this; can Camden be bought off if enough money is offered as CIL, community infrastructure levy?

Can policies which have been created to maintain a pleasing and happy environment for everyone be so casually cast aside?

KATHY DOYLE
Bury Place, WC1