• IT is a disgrace that this Labour council has allowed, unchallenged, their director of planning and regeneration David Joyce to overrule a decision made in a members’ briefing to take the issues around the public’s concern about lorry numbers and consequently the particulates they emit in Swiss Cottage to the planning committee.

Mr Joyce’s intervention, in a letter he wrote to the planning committee members and ward councillors, was so cavalier as to ride roughshod over common sense, intellectual integrity and, most importantly, over the health of those concerned local people many of whom wrote letters of protest.

I ask those with a moral conscience to act now and demand the right for these matters to go to planning committee.

We can’t smell it, we can’t see it, we can’t hear it, but it’s there killing us. It is way, way, over the EU recommended limits now, that is, before the construction starts. We are breathing it in daily and will be for many years to come. It’s damaging our lungs and hearts right now.

We have no control over it and no one is prepared to control it in spite of Camden’s mission statements by Cllr Adam Harrison.

Those of us who live surrounding Swiss Cottage open space, otherwise known as The Green, are deeply concerned and utterly helpless to protect ourselves from the extra particulates generated by the 100 Avenue Road development.

This “green lung” at Swiss Cottage is the only one in a long list of green lungs across the borough of Camden that was not listed for protection and has remained unprotected from the consequences of redevelopment.

Obviously Camden had a clear intention many years ago, hence no listed protection for this green that lies next to the area allocated as a town centre and is now owned by the developer Essential Living.

What was, and still is, morally even more disgraceful than the intended abandonment of this much-needed green lung for commercial use is the fact that, while doing this, Camden simultaneously sold off surrounding areas in close proximity to the prime land for housing to be built; but what kind of housing and for whom?

The flats were built by Barratt and allocated to vulnerable people with mental and physical disabilities. The rest of the surround had already been sold for a senior citizens’ home to be built.

Finally, the Victorian terraced row, in the Belsize conservation area encompassing the enclosure of this green lung was converted eventually into council flats.

In short, the entire surround housed people with little or no social and economic clout. And this by the Labour Party!

ELAINE CHAMBERS
Chair, Winchester Road Residents Association