‘On HS2, when will our councillors take an interest, start actually representing residents and stop letting bureaucrats make all the running?’

• ROBERT Latham’s tour de force letter on HS2 (Tories are turning HS2 into an elephant trap for Labour, February 22) prompts me to highlight a further very real cause for concern for Camden residents.

As someone who has been actively involved against HS2 wreaking havoc in Camden for more than a decade I observe that, both throughout the lengthy hybrid bill petitioning process and at HS2’s interface with local authority bureaucrats, there is a deplorable contempt for residents.

There’s a determination to keep them at a distance, with only token and tick-box influence. The reality is that council officers would far rather interact with big businesses than to listen to local residents.

That cabal’s best interests are absolutely not the same as residents. These so-called professionals don’t stick around and be accountable. They change jobs like a merry-go-round. Whereas us locals not only have skin in the game but, time and again, we are proved to have been making valid criticisms and sensible suggestions.

Camden is lucky to have such local heroes as Robert Latham, Jeff Travers, Martin Shepard, Hero Granger Taylor, Slaney Devlin (and Tom Foot!). While they all speak out sincerely for residents’ genuine concerns, our Camden Council faces the other way and pursues the unwanted and unnecessary HS2 station at Euston, with its office city and the cloud-cuckoo aim of 10,000 more homes for foreign investors.

On HS2, when will our councillors take an interest, start actually representing residents and stop letting bureaucrats make all the running?

PAUL BRAITHWAITE, NW5