• IAN Cohen, as the Conservative candidate who came in third in the council by-election in Fortune Green, had the brass neck to complain about the size of the development proposed by Land Securities at the O2 site.

This isn’t a Camden Council development – as the Tories are wont to tell us – but yet another massive private sector development of luxury flats, from which the local community and Camden have to negotiate some crumbs of community benefit and desperately needed social housing.

Can I remind Ian Cohen that it is Conservative policy that allows landowners to extract massive capital gains from developing previously unused land, be it in cities or, worse still, in the surrounding Green Belt that is London’s green lung?

Going right back to Boris Johnson’s time as London mayor, and continuing to this day, the Conservatives have supported massive developments of luxury flats and office towers across London while starving councils of the funds to build the affordable and social-rent housing that Londoners really need.

And it is Johnson’s government that has introduced planning “reforms” that will make it easier for developers to get planning approval and harder for local people and local councils to object.

It hasn’t escaped notice – and can’t be entirely coincidental – that property developers are among the biggest financial donors to the Conservative Party. So let’s have no more of this fake concern for “overdevelopment” and the wellbeing of the local community by the local Tories.

ENYD NORMAN
Burrard Road, NW6