• IN your report on the role of voluntary organisations providing food to vulnerable residents (Help us make sure nobody goes hungry again, October 15), Camden Council sets out its “helping” role.

However it omits examples of how it hinders the voluntary sector elsewhere.

The CNJ has frequently raised the issues of rents the council charges such organisations.

One of the organisations profiled in your report currently pays the council £30,000 a year – the equivalent of perhaps 30,000 meals – in rent.

A more recent example of “negative help” is the loss of a donor who had admired the fantastic decoration of shop shutters in Lismore Circus and offered to fund a voluntary sector project to paint over heavily graffitied shutters on a café in Queen’s Crescent. This would have helped brighten up the main entry to Queen’s Crescent Market.

Unexplained and lengthy delays in clarifying whether this project would need the council’s permission, or even acknowledging the offer, led to the donor taking the funds elsewhere.

No doubt those concerned had other priorities, but no explanation was given, and no attempt made to keep the potential donor on board.

Perhaps the newly appointed cabinet member for the community sector, Cllr Anna Wright, might like to look into what can be learned from this case.

JOHN LANDAU,
NW5