Andrew Dow with the former mayor of Camden Jill Fraser

• THANK you for such a balanced report about our estate, (Tenants on estate facing bulldozer say new plans ‘are not what we voted for’, September 28).

We welcome the news Camden acknowledge that our residents should have a say in the final design of the regenerated estate.

Eighty-three per cent of respondents to our estate-wide canvass said “I still want regeneration, but not based on this plan. I want Camden to think again”.

However, can Camden’s cabinet member for new homes, jobs and community investment, Cllr Danny Beales, really claim, “From day one, we have been upfront with residents that we would only move forward with a scheme if they backed it”?

Was it not only a few weeks ago that he told Jill Fraser, at the Parisienne Café on Queen’s Crescent at 4pm on Thursday August 24 (a meeting which he called), that “if residents continued to say they didn’t like the design, Camden would walk away”, this “would be on the TRA”, that this was the only design available, and (if we continued) that Camden would take the money set aside for our estate and use it on Bacton Low Rise and Wendling instead?

Cllr Beales was invited to arrange a public meeting to tell residents all this, but declined.

It is important that those seeking the highest levels of public office in Camden are not only seen to follow the highest standard of behaviour, but can also tell the truth and be accountable.

JILL FRASER & ANDREW DOW
Chair & Secretary
West Kentish Town Estate Tenants’ & Residents’ Association