Council leader Georgia Gould

• GEORGIA Gould is deluded if she believes that “the stronger the role the council has as a developer, as a regulator, involved with the capacity we have in-house to ensure that the housing we build is safe, the better”.

Building control officers inspected the Chalcots works and, as far as they were able to ascertain, “the building regulations are satisfied”.

It was civilians, not Camden’s planning or building control officers, who noticed that a change-of-use scheme in Malden Road contravened basic guidance about providing a protected means of escape for occupants – though, at least, in this case the senior planner said she would “ask the applicant to make sure the plans will comply with building regulations”. Ask?

Nor was it building control officers who spotted that a local development was – oops! – missing its basement when they passed it. This, they responded airily when questioned, wasn’t a material change.

So that was OK, then… and building control officers seemed similarly unexercised by a development whose shop ignored a raft of building regulations and steamrollered the Equalities Act.

These three examples are recent and drawn from a minuscule area of Camden. Councillors have excused this level of competence on the grounds that the officers are overworked. They may well be, but the problem is more serious than that.

VAL STEVENSON
Allcroft Road, NW5