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Is this a fait accompli on plans to expand school?
• I WANT to draw attention to the proposed expansion of Emmanuel School in Mill Lane, West Hampstead, and how the governors of the school and Camden Council are explaining the plan, which involves demolishing four Victorian houses and expanding into the open space, to the local community (Houses make way for bigger school, March 5).
There has been one public meeting with a capacity for 80 people, but attended by only
20 or so, some of whom lived closest by but had had no notification of it other than word of mouth.
Plans and artistic impressions of the project were posted on the school’s website only a week before going before Camden’s planning committee, giving local residents little time to register their objections.
Be assured there will be many.
The houses in question have been bought and allowed to deteriorate under short-life licence; the architect’s drawings are clearly advanced and ready to be implemented, so it is obvious that the governors of Emmanuel School and Camden are trying to present the local community with a fait accompli.
The new building, squeezed into a tiny site, is projected to end up with 200 pupils within five years of its completion, double the present number, with disastrous consequences for the area; an increase of vehicular traffic as children are delivered and collected, which will hit Mill Lane at rush-hour.
It has been suggested that if traffic does increase to gridlock levels, Mill Lane would be a one-way street.
This would make a race-track of what is already a very busy, hard-to-cross, road and would have serious effects on local residents and side streets and emergency vehicles .
I fear for the whole of the Mill Lane open space.
RUSSELL DENTON
Holmdale Road, NW6
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