• I AM one of the residents who is helping make the streatery project a success for our businesses who suffered greatly during the lockdown.

It is with great dismay that the slip road was not closed for this project as was agreed with the council and expected by the community.

The failure to carry out the agreed proposal was due to Camden Council notifying the organisers just a week before the opening, of traffic restrictions that should have been worked out months in advance.

The repercussions for this failure are now being felt, and the missed opportunity here cannot be understated.

For 26 years I’ve looked at the green as it progressively falls into the sorriest of tatters. Instead of being a lovely space at the heart of community, used by families, local workers, musicians, artists, sunbathers, old and young, it’s instead a filthy, pigeon-infested, graffiti-blighted, rubbish-strewn embarrassment. A health hazard and an eyesore.

Only the street drinkers call this place home, which is why they feel so comfortable urinating in the bushes every day and also vomiting behind the benches every day. This is why smokers use the ancient fountain basins as their personal ashtrays every day and rubbish dominates the whole space.

Whoever is meant to look after this space should be ashamed. Why is it so difficult to maintain this space? Why don’t the local community use it? Because it’s an island, a stranded island between three busy roads. Simple.

This was the chance for our community to reclaim a massive chunk of their local area but instead, due to the failures of their council, the unloved space that exists continues and will instead just fall further into tatters. This was our chance to make a positive change.

The Streatery, despite this failure, is a success, but it’s only for the short-term. I cannot help but think that the long-term benefits of what this space could bring to our area will now not be known.

If your ideal vision for South End Green is just a bus stand cutting off a filthy green used only by street drinkers that terrify families, then I’m sorry, this is a poor stunted and selfish protectionism that is holding our community back from accessing a massively valuable asset that is theirs to use.

The community is being robbed of this space. Give it a decent future by connecting it to the main land and let everyone use it as it should be.

PETER MARIGOLD,
NW3