• SAVE Museum Street (SMS) is a group bringing together residents and local associations concerned about the proposals from private equity company BC Partners to build a bulky
74-metre skyscraper on the site of the former Travelodge at the corner of High Holborn and Museum Street, in and adjoining the Bloomsbury conservation area.

The CNJ has carried extensive reports about this controversial project.

SMS has two principal objectives. One is to ensure public awareness of the proposals. This is particularly important because of the developers’ decision not to carry out the public consultation a project like this calls for.

The other objective is to contribute constructively to the debate about how best to bring the properties, including listed buildings, comprised in the proposals back into productive and harmonious use.

As the CNJ has reported, SMS has tabled alternative proposals. SMS has also carried out an extensive exercise to review the BC Partners’ proposals against Camden’s own published policies, as well as some national guidelines.

SMS has identified that, if the proposals were given the go ahead in their present form, there would be at least 40 contraventions of these policies.

SMS has now submitted a dossier to Camden with the results of this exercise. Many of these policies are very important. They include:

— quality of design;

— visual impact on the immediate area and the skyline, including protected views;

— damage to, including demolition of, heritage assets;

— deprivation of daylight and sunlight in existing and new properties;

— the small amount of public open space proposed;

— destruction of some of the few trees in the area; and

— the impact on climate change caused by the demolition of Selkirk House (former Travelodge) instead of retrofitting.

This is all the more inexcusable in that Camden has declared a climate emergency and its policies should be followed with that in mind.

These are just some of the problems associated with proposals which have been judged not to be viable by professional experts.

SMS understand the proposal is to be considered by planning committee next month. It is hard to see what could justify condoning such whole scale non-compliance with the council’s own policies.

PETER BLOXHAM, SMS