• THE West Kentish Town Estate (WKTE) steering group meeting on April 24 revealed several unpalatable truths that Camden Council does not want residents to know.

When the planning application for regeneration is made later this year, it will only include detailed plans for three items:

— three new blocks of flats for private sale only at £500,000 each at the south end of the estate;

— a mixed private/ social housing block on Queen’s Crescent, with segregated entrances; and

— a 14-storey tower block for tenants only.

These are the no detailed plans for anything else.

The tower block will be built on the site of the only dedicated recreational area, the football pitch on Weedington Road. This will be lost to the estate as soon as this project starts.

When tenants move in, they will lose the option to move again. As far as Camden Council are concerned, they will have been given a new home on the 13th floor, and should be grateful.

Why no details for phases after this? Is it because Camden is running out of the money they assured residents would be set aside? Building materials went up 19.8 per cent in 2022.

The “flexibility” to which Danny Beales – cabinet member for investing in communities, culture and an inclusive economy – alluded in the July 2022 cabinet meeting, now they have residents’ vote, means that Camden can leave tenants dangling indefinitely for years, as verified by every subsequent phase having now gone back at least two more years. This number will only increase – ref Bacton Low Rise.

Tenants now face the following choices, which Camden should tell them about, but won’t:

1) staying in their current flat, which may already be overcrowded or damp-infested and wait to be rehoused some time in the future, but which may not happen at all, while living on a building site, while their area becomes a sink estate over the next decade, and accept that this may entail living in a tower block; or

2) joining the scramble of people trying to find alternative social housing in Camden’s limited stock; or

3) hoping for a miracle.

No wonder a steering group attendee told Camden, “If you’d told everyone how long this was going to take before the ballot, you’d never have got the vote you did”.

WKTE tenants deserve better.

ANDREW DOW, NW5