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Talacre development will be harmful to the community
An open letter to doctors at the Prince of Wales Road Medical Practice concerning the Dalby Street, Talacre development:
• WE were very sorry to see from a letter posted on Camden’s planning site that the Prince of Wales medical practice is giving such support to the Dalby Street, Talacre development… by encouraging the scheme you may be making the difference between it being built and not being built. If it is built, it will be a disaster for the sports centre and for the public both local and those who come from far away. What has happened to Talacre over the last 10 years has been a huge success as those of us who have lived in the area for a long time well recognise.
I have been opposing this development for over nine months now, working virtually full time. During that time, I have not found anyone apart from yourselves and the developer, who supports it. There were some who have changed their minds – mainly because they didn’t realise its ramifications in the early days and were caught up in the public relations hype.
Being in a minority of one (or eight, I suppose), is not in itself a sin, yet supporting something that will be so harmful to the community is surely not defensible.
Consider the following:
• Pedestrians, instead of being able to walk from Prince of Wales Road on a pavement next to a wide, albeit scruffy road will have to walk along a two-metre wide 55m long path on the park side of the building which will overhang it. The park closes at dusk so it will be the only route for those walking. It will seem dangerous and probably will be. Defenders of the scheme maintain the path will be safe because it will be brightly lit, with CCTV and will require, to quote the pedestrian access plan: “That visibility shall be such that there shall be no areas that cannot be seen by a pedestrian waking along the footpath” and “The detail along the building elevation adjoining the new pedestrian footpath shall be such as to preclude any recesses or alcoves within which people may hide.”
Would you and everyone you know feel safe? The sports centre attracts a wonderfully diverse clientele but even so there are some who feel excluded. Indeed the only criticism I have found of it in its present state is that it is not obvious enough from the main road and needs to appear to be more accessible.
• Vehicles will have to use a narrow road on the railway side of the building. It will have no footpath on either side so it will be like you have in a multi-storey car park. When large vehicles need to use it, a bollard will have to be lowered. There is no space to wait even for a minute if others are arriving and marshals have the responsibility to see that “no parking/ waiting activity occurs within the permanent access way”.
• Deliveries have to scheduled at 30-minute intervals between 8am and 2pm and service vehicles servicing the sports centre are only permitted between those times. The doctors’ surgery will have to obey the same rules.
• Marshals have to be employed and paid for by the 36 private flats (and presumably yourselves). To start with, after the building is complete, there has to be one marshal on duty from an hour before the sports centre opens to an hour after it closes.
Thereafter, the number depends on whatever it takes to ensure that the sports centre and other public amenities don’t suffer as a result of this restricted access. They will be needed for all time.
Please consider your duty to the community and review your support for a scheme that would do so much harm.
Nick Harding
Talacre under Threat, NW5
Is it a hoax?
• I’VE just received a copy of a 12-page document, purporting to be a consultation about the future of Talacre Gardens.
Cripes! – as the Mayor of London is reputed to say, when confronted by an insurmountable challenge.
There are no fewer than 24 multiple-choice questions, many of them repetitive and several contradicting one another; plus another five about myself, my health and my household. These personal questions seem grossly impertinent. What possible relevance can they have to a planning decision?
And all that is without the ethnic monitoring and alternative language forms that Camden normally includes with its consultations.
What are we supposed to make of it? Is it a hoax, like the electoral registration scam that was recently perpetrated in Northampton?
I’m inclined to consign it to the recycling. Certainly, the effort involved in completing all those multiple choices (do I strongly disagree or just disagree?), and then going over it all to check that I haven’t contradicted myself seems like quite an imposition.
Has anyone else received this thing, and what have they made of it?
James Brander
Hadley Street, NW1 |
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