• FOLLOWING the gut-wrenching High Court decision on February 7 not to allow objectors to the plans for Somers Town to go to full judicial review we have been left with nowhere to take our well-founded arguments about anomalies in the consultation and planning process.

We have learned several painfully but important lessons along our journey.

First Camden Council can use its powers with impunity and rip up agreed strategies and their own guidance on planning issue, when it suits them. Indeed, they have driven a coach and horses through the protection offered to Somers Town via their key developmental Core Strategy document (see CS4).

Second, it demonstrates that the costly planning framework, drawn up after lengthy consultation with residents and stakeholders, though useful for Camden to quote as sacrosanct when it chooses to oppose an application is, in fact, not worth the paper it is written on. If this applies to developmental policy just six years in to a 15-year strategy, it no doubt applies to other plans at local level, for example, the Camden Plan and the Euston Area Plan and, indeed, possibly the wider London Plan.

It teaches us a lot about lack of adherence to commitments both written and oral made by Camden. All this makes a mockery of so-called key priority documents.

Third, broken written and oral commitments are scattered in the wake of Camden’s volte face, destroying trust in the engagement and democratic processes. There is no way to hold decision-makers to account on their decisions and broken commitments between elections.

Camden Council should hang its corporate head in shame for its complicity in pulling the rug from under its most vulnerable communities. What Camden is “robbing” from its communities is irreplaceable.

While the council apparently has the law on its side there is no justice for residents of Somers Town where its environmental and cultural assets are being appropriated and destroyed without the consent of those who have paid for them – namely, through the past and present contributions to the Housing Revenue Account from generations of council tenants and leaseholders.

Make no mistake, Camden Council will never be forgiven.

FRAN HERON
Chair, Camden Town DMC
& Ampthill Square TRA