Only a few lights ever seem to be on in the evenings in the Visage

I regularly pass through Swiss Cottage on my way into Camden Town where you can see tell-tale signs, perhaps just glimmers, of a partially-functioning society.

There are people coming and going from the still magnificent Sir Basil Spence library, the doctors’ surgery, theatre and leisure centre.

There are often youngsters bumbling about on the new playground, outdoor gym equipment and sports pitch.

On Wednesdays, the farmers’ market is heaving despite the expensive food and the big hole at 100 Avenue Road.

Unusually, there is even a place for the teenagers to go, The Winch youth centre.

The new landscaping job by the council next to the fountain is a huge improvement.

But just past all of this, you get the noise of whatever construction works are going on at the Chalcots estate this week, the buzz of secondary school life at UCL Academy.

And yet there is something about this demi-paradise that feels a little amiss.

Perhaps it is to do with another very familiar sight of Swiss Cottage: The Visage private housing development that, almost 20 years after it was built, still remains mostly dark at night.

Few people appear to be home at the block – once dubbed “The Titanic” due to its boat-like structure – and the rows of dark windows strike a clear contrast with the neighbouring Taplow Tower, lit up like a Christmas tree at night.

When you think about the demand for these council flats – even getting on the council housing waiting list is impossible for most people – it feels all the more absurd to see homes routinely left empty.

The concept of homes being bought for investment – and then not rented out – has always been one that I found hard to get my head around.

Surely any homeowner, overseas or otherwise, would prefer having the £15,000-£30,000 coming in each year in rent, than nothing at all.

Questions about whether newbuild homes in the new Swiss Cottage tower block will be sold as investments, rather than places for someone to live, came up at the 100 Avenue Road planning meeting on Thursday.

Save Swiss Cottage’s Andrew Kay asked what the developer and the council was doing to ensure these homes were sold to people as a primary residence? Not much, was the predictable response.

What about following the lead of another place I am almost equally familiar with, St Ives in Cornwall.

The picture-book seaside town has been overrun by second-home owners snapping up the quaint fishing cottages and sea-view flats for many years.

The council there has introduced “principal residence” policy on all new build homes in the St Ives area neighbourhood development plan, in the hope of stopping the rot.

The jury is out on whether the system is working or not, but a dozen other authorities have since followed suit with similar conditions built into its overarching policies.

The meeting heard that Camden Council could impose primary residence conditions on new-build developers through the Section 106 system.

But this could not be done without something in the borough’s wider planning policy having been agreed first.

The council’s lawyer told the 100 Avenue Road meeting: “We simply don’t have a policy like that. There may be some authorities that do have it. It may be particularly coastal areas that have it where there are very very extreme issues to do with second homes and tourist accommodation. But you have to go through first having the policy in place, and we don’t have it.”

Why? Could it be that such a clause would put another barrier up for developers who, despite what they say, do not give a damn about how many are home in their tower blocks late at night?