It's astonishing Camden Council seem to have taken up the idea of reorientating a historic square
Thursday, 30th March 2017
St James Gardens in Euston
• EARLIER this month your Comment drew attention to concern about a “permissive culture taking hold at Camden’s planning department” (Unhappy ending for us can be good for some developers, March 2).
At the Euston Area Planning Brief – Futures Workshop, held by Camden Council on March 7, it was suggested that Euston Square be “flipped round so it becomes greater in depth and smaller in width” with the area taken from east and west added to the north, in order to create a kind of triumphal approach to the station itself.
In his letter (Spring in the Gardens, March 23), Jeff Travers voiced widely-shared concerns in the community about the impact on our green public open spaces of the HS2 railway scheme and the commercial development which will follow in its wake.
And he referred to something that wasn’t mentioned at the Camden meeting.
Namely the very high value “greenfield” development plots fronting onto Euston Road which this change could bring about, particularly at the west which is just outside the London Plan’s protected vista from Primrose Hill to St Paul’s Cathedral so there could be a very tall building there indeed.
The Camden Civic Society believe the proposed reorientation of Euston Square would be an arbitrary distortion of our historic urban landscape.
It would also dramatically reduce the amenity provided by the square and its magnificent old trees to the very many people who walk through it each day or simply pass nearby in the traffic on Euston Road.
The freeholder of Euston Square Gardens turns out not to be Camden Council but Network Rail which would be under pressure from the government to maximise returns from its property and neither may understand the significance of the square either as a historic space or as an amenity.
But it is quite astonishing that Camden Council appears to have taken up the idea of reorientating the square on Network Rail’s behalf.
Is this yet further evidence of the “permissive culture” taking hold at planning department?
DOROTHEA HACKMAN
Chair, Camden Civic Society
