Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• YOU reported on Camden Conservatives’ leader Oliver Cooper’s attempt to block high-rises in low-rise areas, including at the O2 Centre.

Cllr Cooper has he been a real rock on which the opposition to Landsec and Camden’s plans for the O2 Centre has been built over the last two years.

Many residents were delighted he’d succeeded in forcing an extraordinary council meeting in April specifically to pass a motion banning high-rises in low-rise areas. This was the big chance to end the concrete jungle disaster at the O2 once and for all.

Extraordinary council meetings are extraordinarily rare, with just one taking place since 2011. But if there’s anything that warrants it, it is saving our communities from skyscrapers.

I am shocked this has now been quashed, and the meeting cancelled, because of Labour’s chicanery and Lib Dems’ naive incompetence.

In response to the Conservatives calling an extraordinary meeting, the Lib Dems decided to play politics by calling their own extraordinary meeting to symbolically declare that the council doesn’t like government policy on housing.

Whereas the Conservative proposal would actually have banned high-rises, the Lib Dem proposal would not have had any effect at all. Yet they still demanded it have equal billing.

This desperate desire to be relevant has backfired, by giving Camden’s pro-tower block Labour leadership the perfect excuse to refuse both meetings.

The Conservatives’ ban on tall buildings will now be getting a few minutes in a much larger meeting, considering many other items.

Lib Dems have turned the high-rise ban into a side issue. That will make it much easier for Labour to water it down and roll out the red carpet for high-rises.

Recently I launched a petition that’s been signed by over 1,000 concerned South Hampstead residents. It now seems unlikely they’ll get the occasion to object that they deserve.

Labour deselected their own councillors for opposing their planning disaster, and Lib Dems are sabotaging Conservative attempts to stop it. The price could be 20 years of building works and a Camden that ends up like Canary Wharf.

I hope all councillors see that while Labour and the Lib Dems have relegated it to a footnote in an upcoming meeting, it is anything but to residents. And I hope all councillors vote to ban high-rises at the O2 Centre and Murphy’s Yard.

Sign our petition at o2.nw6.it and make your views on the O2 Centre clear on May 5 by voting Conservative.

MARX DE MORAIS
Conservative Candidate for South Hampstead ward