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Heading down a blind alley
• THE picture showing the proposed development in front of Talacre sports centre (July 10), shows how overwhelming it would be.
The 55 flats would be built on top of the existing wide access road, which is safe, though untidy. The suggested access would be a narrow road without pavements, with a 2.5metre-wide footpath for pedestrians on the other side.
The sports centre is a great success, used by schools and families from all over the borough and beyond. Its potential is threatened by this development, which would make access difficult and unsafe.
Would you care to leave work, at say 11pm, to walk along that alleyway?
When the council made the terrible mistake of giving planning permission, they did at least give it, subject to satisfactory access arrangements.
This condition has not been met, and never could be in the available space.
An earlier scheme, relying on one-way vehicular access from Wilkin Street, in the north, was denied to the developer by Network Rail, and he ill-advisedly thought he could fit in the same size development in the same area, but with a two-way road.
The suggested way of servicing and managing it by using marshals, could only work if there were never, ever, any change – structural or operational – to the sports centre.
Surely the developer must have realised some time ago that it simply won’t work?
Why does he persist?
Brigid Sandford-Smith
Bassett Street, NW5
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