• ON Monday morning this week I noticed the beginnings of a shanty town on the open space in Brill Place, Somers Town.

It’s slap bang in the middle of an area which has benefited from billions of pounds worth of government investment over the past few decades, the magnificent Francis Crick Institute, St Pancras International station, the British Library etc etc.

The shanty town can have no future, since the area is to be cleared to make way for a 25-storey block of luxury flats, homes far beyond the reach of current shanty-town dwellers’ pockets.

Why is it so hard for our politicians to imagine a solution to our heart-breaking homelessness problem?

EF WILSON
NW1