Model of the plan development of the O2 Centre site [@Maygroveroad]

• I LIVE in West Hampstead and a very large development is being proposed by Land Securities for the O2 site between Finchley Road and West End Lane.

I have been involved in gathering information about this and reading about the development and the unfolding thereof.

No one in the community is naïve enough to think that the site will not be developed.

There are objections to this plan and many questions, as it stands, from some residents but I make these points here because there is literally nowhere else to put them.

• Landsec has held many consultations, they feel, with the public.

However most of these have been with poor, sketchy, information and a great deal of obfuscation – until last week when they finally produced a model of their plan – and have been heavily orchestrated by Landsec.

• When Camden Council is approached, we find that only one cabinet member appears to be in charge of the development and all communication seems to go through his office.

He is also on the planning committee. A point of council probity which should be exercised vigorously. No reaction from anyone in the council about this blatant example of partisan politics.

• We have three councillors, supposedly.

Two of these are on the planning committee and therefore cannot discuss or help us at all.

This situation, I might add, replicates the last term of the council when we had only one councillor available to help us with community issues.

So that now makes almost eight years we have had no help from our councillors to speak of.

• When we went to the polls to elect councillors, we thought that we were going to have a democratic and even-handed “housekeeping team” to guide us, as our neighbourhoods had just been designated with intensification status. Oh how wrong we were!

• Imagine our dismay and despair when we find that the developers are guided, have their hands held and are spoon-fed every step of the way by Camden’s planning department.

We attempted to get Community Infrastructure Levy money to pay some professionals to help us understand our options and position in all this because we are not offered this from the council, as the developers are.

We were refused. By the council.

I could go on, but why? Councillors no longer work for the people that elected them.

Any conflict of interest is ignored and or denied; emails are ignored; instead of six members of the council in the last eight years we have had the unfettered attention of two and nothing has been done about this; the council website is unmanageable; there is no overseeing or supervision of the dealings the council has with very rich, determined, developers; no one seems to think it important to investigate that our “representatives” are actually doing their job and working for anybody other than themselves and the Labour Party, who, quite frankly, have had the majority in this council for far too long.

I only hope that after the next local election, we will be able to revive our starved, neglected, and abused democracy. But it may be dead!

KATE SHAUGHNESSY, NW6