• A FEW days ago a number of us, residents of streets adjacent to the junction of Camden Street and Camden Road, attended a meeting at the Town Hall with representatives of Transport for London.

TfL have stated that, to enhance pedestrian safety, they intend to create a north-south pedestrian crossing over Camden Road on the east side of the junction, coupled with a No Left Turn for traffic coming down Camden Street.

We wholly support the idea of a crossing, but are strongly opposed to the No Left Turn which, we believe, would lead to rat-running through the streets to the east of the junction, in particular Georgiana Street, Lyme Street, Pratt Street, Bonny Street, Prowse Place, Ivor Street, Jeffreys Street, Jeffreys Place and, further afield, Bartholomew Road and Sandall Road.

This would cause a significant increase in noise, congestion, vibration, environmental pollution, damage and danger in these quiet narrow residential streets.

Such results would also run wholly counter to the council’s recently announced Camden Town Low Emission Neighbourhood, whose area includes several of these streets. They might very well also endanger pupils at local primary schools.

The Town Hall meeting was supposed to address our concerns. In the event it did nothing of the sort.

It soon became evident TfL had no intention of changing their plans in any way: the No Left Turn would go ahead no matter what we, or our councill­ors Pat Callaghan and Richard Cotton might say.

Our objections, and our suggestions for alternative solutions, such as a left-turn filter on the Camden Street traffic lights, were brushed aside.

The best we could achieve were vague promises that if, once the No Left Turn was installed, our streets were adversely affected, TfL would consider “mitig­ating measures”. What these measures might be, or how long it might take to effect them, remained a mystery.

This didn’t come wholly as a surprise. The whole process began last September when TfL sent out a “consultation” document outlining their proposals and asking for our reactions.

Of the 249 who responded (TfL’s own figures), over 200 rejected the idea of a No Left Turn at the junction. In favour? Three.

Despite this TfL announced they were going ahead with their proposals as stated. Which does rather raise the question: why spend public money on a “consultation” if you’re going to blatantly ignore the results?

In the face of what Peter Hodgman, secretary of the Jeffreys Street Association, has called “an apparently intransigent and unaccountable bureaucracy”, we’re supported by our councillors, by our representative on the London Assembly, Andrew Dismore, and by our MP, Sir Keir Starmer.

We therefore call on Camden Council, and in particular on Adam Harrison, cabinet member for improving Camden’s environment, to do all they can to dissuade TfL from implementing this potentially deleterious No Left Turn.

SIGNATORIES: YVONNE BYNG-MADDICK, PETER CLAPP, JOHN & PRISCILLA GREEN, CHLOE HALL, PETER HODGMAN, LAURA IMPIAZZI, PHILIP KEMP, PETER LANGWORTH, SUSANNA & BEVIS SALE, NICK & SOL SCARFE, BRENDA SUTHERLAND, FIONA TRIER, PAUL WATKINS, MAURICE WHITE