• THE pandemic, with the need for virtual internet meetings, has enabled Camden Council to further restrict communications with residents.

In parts of the borough an estimated quarter of households do not have full access to the internet. Consultation meetings are usually only advertised online.

When you have joined a meeting, it is the “controller”, a councillor or officer, that lets you speak and can mute you if what you say is against the proposals.

Then there is the “webinar”, such as the recent one in Gospel Oak about unpopular proposals to close Queen’s Crescent.

Only councillors, who have plenty of other access to council officers, were allowed to speak and no local resident was allowed to contribute.

Other virtual “consultation” meetings are held in secret, such as the ongoing assembly discussing a “vision” for Gospel Oak.

Add to this a confidentiality requirement on those carefully selected to participate in such meetings, as is in the case of the newly, council-formed, Carlton community provision working group. Even the names of participants are kept “secret”.

No longer do residents have to be declared “vexatious litigants” to be effectively excluded from all correspondence with the council, as occurred with Nick Harding in his relentless pursuit of the missing Talacre land sale millions.

MICK FARRANT, NW5