• IN a visit to the new development at Chase Farm Hospital on September 29, Lord O’Shaughnessy, parliamentary under secretary of state at the health department, praised the prospect of the delivery of “world class care to patients who, along with local residents, have been involved from the start of the project in shaping how the hospital will meet their needs”.

Moreover he was also impressed by “how surplus land would be used for other projects such as affordable housing and education, for the benefit of the community”.

Quite a contrast with the Royal Free Hospital’s Pears Building, a vanity prestige project imposed on the community, likely to be mostly for the benefit of private patients while elsewhere on the sprawling RFH site land remains underused and unplanned.

At no time has the Royal Free responded to proposals to locate the new project on the Lawn Road side of the site in order to improve the shabby and chaotic outlook there.

Far from working with the community, this RFH project threatens a Grade I-listed building and a school that together represent years of selfless effort by leading community members who have been subjected to extreme stress over three years.

A combination of financial engineering within the NHS trust, in concert with Camden Council’s all-too-obvious pursuit of section 106 money from this project, with more on the way from others such as the virtually untrammelled development in Camden Market, is putting ever more pressure on Camden communities.

And this at a time when senior Camden councillors seem to be departing for greener pastures elsewhere in the wake of disastrous mismanagement of the Chalcots estate affair.

There remain major questions as to Camden’s stewardship of the borough and its heritage.

NIGEL STEWARD, NW3