• IT was no surprise to read Anthony Royle’s cataclysmic account of the council’s stream of failures in your article (Chalcots: Town Hall criticised over its handling of complaints) – and Russell Grant’s excellent exposure of the “Abuses of local power” of Camden’s licensing, planning and traffic management departments (both published on July 18).

I write as a scarred survivor of the 10-year battle against the 24-storey tower about to be built at 100 Avenue Road (A worse 100 Avenue Road plan, July 18) and more than six years of Kafkaesque mental torture dealing with the smug cabal of Camden planners who twisted reality and their words to ensure that Deliveroo could keep operating in Swiss Cottage no matter the mountain of evidence against them.

These planners seem to have little or no vested interest in our local community, yet have somehow come to consider themselves entitled to ignore the needs of residents.

Public consultations are clearly a farce. The grim reality is that the “planning consultation” is over before it begins.

It is over the moment council officers start working with developers to help them tailor their schemes to withstand all local opposition – no matter how harmful the schemes are to the local community and how justified the local opposition.

The wonder is that we collude in this sham “democratic” exercise. Because the only logical response to such a bogus process must be for the local community to decide to refuse to take part in it.

If, as I am suggesting here, we boycott all future Camden “public consultations”, Camden will either take notice – and do something about their current practices; or they won’t – in which case we will be no worse off.

We will, in fact, be better off because we will not have wasted any more of our time and money on yet another futile exercise.

EDIE RAFF
Former Chair of Save Swiss Cottage
Chair of Cresta House Residents Association