• FRANK Dobson had lots of interesting things to say about how Camden could build more homes for real people, despite this government’s stupidity in encouraging investment by what he rightly calls “tax-dodging, money-laundering, foreign billionaires”, (‘We can create space to build new homes’, March 22).

Clamping down on these “cash-boxes-in-the-sky” investments, bolstered by a change in rules to allow councils to build affordable homes, are essential steps, but they probably require the removal of the useless government we now have.

We need more immediate action and, at present, councils far too readily allow such developments to happen, as a letter under Frank Dobson’s article confirmed, (The Community Investment Programme is a scandal, March 22).

In this, Louis Loizou discussed how Camden’s Community Investment Programme is already failing: allowing developers to build on any open land it owns to build private flats and houses.

Mr Loizou says this will result in just 40 council flats over 15 years. And the battle over the awful development at 100 Avenue Road in Swiss Cottage, is a similar example of Camden’s uselessness: they helped the developers, Essential Living (based in the Channel Islands) push through a monstrous.

24-storey tower full of private flats, and a nasty slab block overshadowing the only open space in the area: a total of 189 flats for private rent, with almost nothing for the local people.

And Essential Living’s proposed Construction Management Plan will see an appalling attack on the local community as they seek to route massive trucks through the park and the pedestrianised Market Square, before ramming their way down Winchester Road, right in front of the Mora Burnet House full of mostly house-bound older people.

This process could take up to three years and impose massive burdens and actual danger on all people using the area’s facilities or simply trying to get to their homes.

Labour councillors and the planning officers in Camden must be made to realise that their first responsibility is to the community which pays their wages and the people who need affordable homes so they can live near where they work and keep our society going, not keeping developers happy.

They must take back control: it is our land and must be used for our needs, not to satisfy the greed of investors.

DAVID REED
Eton Avenue, NW3