Central YMCA

• JIM Monahan (Fight for central London is not over… Forum, December 12) was one of the founders of the Covent Garden Community Association some 55 years ago, and
is currently a trustee of the Covent Garden Area Trust, both of which (my late mother and then I) we have been members of from about the same year.

Jim isn’t wrong that the fight is far from over… but surely he is mistaken that it is only now that the planning system, and council policies, merely facilitate the “needs” and interests of the developers, however benign or benevolent they may be.

From Centre Point to Central YMCA (with now even the brutalist remnant left to us to be lost?), and Lego-land, the CNJ has covered many of these battles since the era of the battle to save Covent Garden… but they have all been largely to suit the developers, from Harry Hyams to Shaftesbury, or the Crown Estate in St James’s Market.

Greater London is a living tribute to the pursuit of economic development, whether in Westminster or Camden, and the willingness of planning chiefs to serve the needs of the day.

DOMINIC PINTO
Duval Court, WC2