• GOSPEL Oak residents were concerned at your headline in last week’s story about an alcohol licence application for a convenience store on Lismore Circus, (Licensers refuse to grant booze licence at Lismore Circus shop amid ‘ghetto’ crime warning, August 30).

At the hearing Cllr Marcus Boyland quoted objections from residents overlooking Lismore Circus, only one of whom, and very much in the heat of the moment, had used the words “a ghetto of crime”.

The story, of course, is much, much, more complicated than that: the architects of the Gospel Oak estate thought that in Lismore Circus as an open space they were leaving residents a village square – and with a toddlers’ playground and an open-air gym that certainly works well in daylight hours.

It’s only after dark that, sadly, the deserted space, with its gloomy shuttered commercial premises, becomes a potentially intimidating void randomly vulnerable to dealers, addicts and street drinkers.

Objectors to the licence application, including the very active local police team, felt that the addition of a late-night premises selling alcohol would exacerbate rather than mitigate risk in the area, particularly because a previous owner had been attacked on the premises (which, by the way, have no escape to the rear).

This is not to say at all that Gospel Oak residents do not welcome further commercial investment in Lismore Circus. In fact it’s in everyone’s interest that the space should feel more occupied and frequented further into the evening.

On a final note, we know that in the tabloid world “if it bleeds it leads”, but the editorial integrity of the New Journal should at least demand that it looks at actual crime statistics in Gospel Oak, currently running at around eight per thousand of population, over 33 per cent less than the figure for Camden borough and in fact marginally less that for London as a whole.

CHRIS FAGG
Chair, Gospel Oak Safer Neighbourhood Panel
Vice-Chair Camden Safer Neighbourhood Board