Published: 17 November 2011
by DAN CARRIER

WITH a basement three storeys deep – requiring 1,200 lorry trips to move the earth so it can be dug out – plans to build a new luxury block of flats on the site of a former nurses’ home in Hampstead have been unveiled by developers.

The controversial scheme at New End has provoked scores of objections by people living near the site. Opponents have put together a litany of reasons why Camden Council’s planning committee should throw out the scheme when they meet to discuss the proposals next month.

A petition is being signed at the five primary schools in the immediate area – so far garnering over 300 signatures.

Plans show there will be 15 flats in a seven-storey building, three of which will be underground, carved into the steep slopes of New End. The basement alone would require moving 43,000 tons of earth, and has been earmarked for underground car parking.

The site, in a conservation area and surrounded by historic Georgian and Victorian homes, includes views over Hampstead’s Grade II-listed Christ Church.

Jane Henderson, whose home in Hampstead Square backs onto the site, has helped raise more than £6,000 to pay for an engineering and geological study to investigate the claims made by the developers that the scheme will not cause flooding or subsidence.

The engineering report shows that a pump will have to be active 24 hours a day while water is drained from the site. Then an underground dam made of 225 lorry loads of special waterproofed cement will be poured in to the hole to stem any underground streams.

Mrs Henderson said: “Digging down three storeys in an area riddled with underground watercourses is a precarious plan at best. They want to go beneath the water table and this means there are worries over flooding and subsidence.”

She added: “When you think of the concerns expressed over building one basement under one house – this is equivalent of digging 30 basements under 30 houses.”

Hampstead ward Conservative councillor Chris Knight said the building, dating from 1955 and owned by the Royal Free Hospital, should include a section for affordable housing used by key workers.

He said: “It is hard  to recruit and retain staff in the NHS. This building offered affordable housing for staff and should never have been sold.”

Project manager for owners Bravo Investments, Charles Moss, said they had “received many letters of support.”

He added: “We recognise and we have reacted to the concerns of our immediate neighbours by obtaining independent professional advice made publicly available.

Additional safeguards include independent monitoring and a damages bond at our cost over and above any legal requirement.”