An illustration of how the new tower will look at 100 Avenue Road in Swiss Cottage

• THE planning process in Camden is seriously amiss when all our elected ward councillors cross-party and openly question the decision taken by David Joyce, the unelected director of planning in Camden, to reject the elected members’ briefing panel’s decision to refer the latest 100 Avenue Road construction management plan (CMP) – with its mutually agreed material changes – to a full council planning committee for a public hearing.

An already cynical local community is now seriously questioning why they should ever again bother to take part in planning-related consultations when their views are nearly always, if not always, quashed by unelected council officials.

Indeed there has been a succession of unelected officers who from the very outset have successfully pushed forward each stage of the scheme in the face of circa 3,000 objections and a 5,000-signature petition against it, successfully thwarting the will of the local people in favour of the developer throughout the ensuing seven-year process.

In this endeavour these unelected officials have been ably and reliably supported by yet another group of unelected officers – Camden’s legal team – who can be counted on to raise alarm bells about the dire financial consequences of a thwarted developer taking Camden to court should councillors dare vote against the scheme.

It seems obvious to me that Camden officers and lawyers have decided that the Swiss Cottage 24-storey tower is simply too important for anything to be allowed to impede its progress.

How else to explain their dogged determination in the face of all the compelling evidence against the harm, broken pollution standards and the chaos it will bring to the Swiss Cottage Green Space, local amenity and Finchley Road?

These officers and lawyers do not need to live here to work here and they are certainly not chosen by the local electorate. Yet it is just this handful of individuals who, in the end, make the crucial decisions that deeply impact the quality of life of local residents.

How can local democracy prevail when the community can no longer expect or assume that the councillors they vote for will actually be allowed to represent them?

EDIE RAFF
Chair, Cresta
House Residents Association