The 02 Centre: scheduled for redevelopment 

• MORE than 400 people logged on for last week’s online consultation about the O2 redevelopment in West Hampstead, which stretches from Finchley Road all the way to West End Lane – an opportunity, it was hoped, to voice local concerns.

Not for the first time in Camden, this turned out to be the usual farce: as people put their ques­tions, the representatives of Landsec (the dev­eloper) and the planning officers from Camden Council fobbed them off with weasel words and vague promises.

Landsec proposes to cram an absurdly dense amount of residential accommodation into a series of tower blocks rising to 16 storeys – taller than any anything else in the area and visible from miles away.

The planning officers seem bent on facilitating this by any means necessary. Throughout the two-and-a-half hour discussion their watchword was “viability”, by which they meant its economic viability.

They raised no objection (for example) to Landsec’s proposals to ignore Camden’s requirement that 50 per cent of the housing be “affordable” and slash it to only 30 per cent: an instant extra profit of millions, with not a single eyebrow raised.

In what looks like a desperate push to salvage the shaky finances of Landsec, which recorded a massive drop of 39.4 per cent in its revenue for the last financial year, the O2 development seems to be driven by maximum profitability.

Employed to put lipstick on this pig, one almost felt sorry for the architects with their platitudes about green space, liveability, sustainability, and so on.

Whatever their doubts, residents were advised to hold back until a planning application is submitted: an application that (as we know from past experience) will be negotiated behind closed doors with these obeisant planning officers, for rubber-stamping by a supine planning committee (presided over by a chair who has been in post, unchallenged, for nearly two decades).

So one fears nothing will be able to stop the O2 redevelopment – although there are indications that the local residents are thinking of intensifying their resistance. They would need to do so now – not later.

TOM MUIRHEAD,
NW8