• CAMDEN intends to set up a neighbourhood assembly of 30 people to develop a “vision” for Gospel Oak and West Kentish Town where a very large increase in population is planned, a result of the redevelopment of the council’s estates there.

The assembly is the fourth exercise in supposedly developing a plan for the area dating back over 20 years.

No action followed the previous three exercises: months of work and a residents’ vote to set up a partnership board, a programme of engagement, workshops, and one of the most successful local consultations Camden has ever organised in 2016 which attracted nearly 1,000 responses, a council promise of a strategic framework for the area.

All came to nothing. But at least these exercises and their supposed purpose was widely communicated. Not so the neighbourhood assembly, which is due to start work in a matter of weeks.

For some months I have been trying to find out more about it with little success.

For example:

– terms of reference, powers and budget of the assembly;

– chair and agenda of the assembly;

– the basis of the “random” selection of the 30 members of the assembly;

– how the digitally excluded can be included in this online exercise;

– why the service providers (statutory ones like schools, voluntary sector organisations which provide vital services for the community, religious bodies, health services etc) are excluded;

– how residents excluded from the assembly, many of whom have given a great deal of time in previous exercises, can contribute; and

– what happens next to the “recommendations”?

We must move on, of course, but how can residents have any confidence that this will be anything but the latest sop.

Although I have been asked to register my interest and said “yes” four times my chance of being selected are, I suspect, absolute zero.

MICK FARRANT,
NW5