• THE madness contin­ues at Swiss Cottage.

Essential Living (Swiss Cottage) Ltd, are ploughing ahead with their plans to demolish the 100 Avenue Road building and replace it with a monstrous 24-storey tower full of private rented flats and an equally intrusive seven-storey slab block running the whole length of the park.

Just before Christmas they demolished the former entrance to the offices in the centre of the building and they have now submitted a Construction Management Plan (CMP) detailing how they plan the demolition of the rest of the building and construction of their appalling buildings.

This will be a massively invasive process taking at least three years; full details are presented at: http://planningrecords.camden.gov.uk/ Planning Application – 2017/ 6638/ CMP; Site Address, 100 Avenue Road London NW3 3HF.

The massive amount of detail presented fails to conceal the fact that, over at least three years, they plan to route hundreds of massive trucks through the pedestrianised market square and out down the narrow, and already highly congested, Winchester Road.

This area is the main access point between local homes and the transport and local shopping facilities and, apart from the noise and pollution, these trucks will endanger and inconvenience the thousands of people who live in the area or use the leisure facilities, including local schools whose pupils frequently pass through the area in groups of up to 90 children.

There is an alternative, so we have demanded that Camden acts to protect the local residents and visitors to Swiss Cottage and make the developers change their proposed CMP.

Instead of sending their massive trucks through the pedestrianised market square, they could directly access the site from the main frontage of the building on the A41, Avenue Road, allowing trucks to drive on to the site at the upper end and off again at the lower end near the library. They are already proposing to use this access point for some of the work, why not all of it?

There are five main points which we have made to Camden and the developers, and we hope your readers will add their voices to ours:

• The CMP in its present form confirms Essential Living’s total lack of concern for the local community: as well as exposing all the thousands of users of the area to the noise and pollution from the massive trucks to be used (10.2metre – 33feet – long Muckaway four-axle trucks in their parlance), the process will actively endanger them and Camden must demand an alternative to this stupidity.

• The whole process can be handled using direct access from the whole frontage of the building on the A41 Avenue Road. It may create some incon­venience to all road users and expense to EL, but Transport for London is already planning to con­vert this section of road to a bus and cycle route, so the traffic issues can be managed relatively easily.

• Inadequate consultation: only anonymous leaflets pushed through the doors of the homes immediately impacted by the proposed vehicles when in fact all local residents and users of Swiss Cottage will be impacted.

• The fire safety of the tower is inadequate: only one fire-safe access is proposed. After the awful Grenfell Tower disaster we know this is wrong.

• The metal-faced shed adjacent to the proposed 24-storey tower houses a gas-pressure reduction station, whose potential risk of fire and explosion is high.

New Journal readers may be aware of other problems. please feel free to add to this list and expand on any of the points made when sending your comments to Camden and the developers at: 100AvenueroadCMP@camden.gov.uk and theatresquare@essentialliving.uk.com, or by post to: Planning Department, London Borough of Camden 2nd Floor, 5 Pancras Square c/o Town Hall, Judd Street London WC1H 9JE, with the ref: Planning Application – 2017/ 6638/ CMP; Site Address, 100 Avenue Road London NW3 3HF.

If readers know of anyone else who could help make Camden see sense and force the developers to use this safer approach and not destroy our neighbourhood and endanger all users of Swiss Cottage, please contact them as soon as possible.

Of course, when the building has over 400 residents, the area will still face difficulties: how many delivery and service vehicles a day will try to use the market square for deliveries? There is no alternative, so that may become a further battle as a Delivery and Service Plan will also require approval by Camden.

We sincerely hope you will provide your support in this final battle.

DAVID REED
Treasurer, Save Swiss Cottage Action Group