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Surprised at negative reaction to plans
• WE are writing to express our surprise and concern about the negative tone of the coverage and letters you have published recently about the proposed Dalby Street development.
This certainly does not reflect the attitudes of the vast majority of our patients who we have spoken to about the development. Most of the residents we have spoken to support the redevelopment of a derelict site, particularly as it will incorporate community benefits – a new surgery for our practice and affordable housing. As local doctors who are rooted in the community we serve we are very proud to be involved with this regeneration scheme.
Our current building at 87-89 Prince of Wales Road is too small to house our expanding practice and is totally unsuitable for a surgery. We only have one treatment room with disabled access and all the doctors’ rooms are upstairs with no lift – making access difficult for disabled or seriously ill patients.
We have been seeking a better building for 15 years and the new development at Dalby Street will finally provide us with what we need: modern, spacious, fit for purpose premises which are fully accessible for the disabled.
Dr Nigel Ashworth
Dr Sarah Palmer
Dr Ruairidh Taylor
Dr Richard Walthew
Prince of Wales
Group Practice
Prince of Wales Road
NW5
• I HEAR there will be another by-election in Haverstock ward before long.
Local politicians however, reside in cloud cuckoo land. They seem unaware that there is only one major issue in Haverstock: Dalby Street.
That encompasses the wretched seven-storey scheme by developers and their proposed substandard alternative access, which threatens the prosperity and survival of our popular Sports Centre and Talacre Gardens.
Yet apart from Dermot Greene of Labour who has come forward bravely denouncing this despised project, everyone else is keeping mum. Why? (It is not to late to stop this planning time bomb, February 15).
Are we going to suffer the same treatment as the Kentish Town by-election voters, where the subject of Dalby Street was apparently considered a taboo by all parties before the vote?
Do they really think that the local voters in Haverstock will let them get away with this weak, flimsy reaction to the survival of our most precious conspicuous local asset?
Duncan McMillan
Prince of Wales Road
NW5
• I ASKED a Camden councillor the other day why he and his colleagues were not getting to grip with the Dalby Street issues.
He replied that the matter was simply too complex for any of them to really understand. More alarmingly, neither felt they could entirely trust Town Hall officials’ advice.
To those councillors who wish to do the right thing and are in a quandary, you do not have to rely exclusively on the advice of planners. Just insist on seeing a Traffic Management Plan from the developers. You are entitled to see one.
This would provide you with all the information needed as to how the developer’s proposed access and servicing plan would work. Then, and only then, make up your mind about the closure of Dalby Street.
Mystified councillors might prefer to ask their officers in the planning department whether or not the Dalby Street scheme conforms to Camden’s own Unitary Development Plan (UDP) guidance on access road. As it does not, they might care to ask why not?
Richard Hall
Chamberlain Street
NW1
• THE developers at Dalby Street take all of us for fools.
For those of us who have studied their new access plan for the Talacre Sports Centre, it becomes obvious that the new Dalby Street can only work as a one-way route.
This will require two members of their staff to direct traffic in and out, to and from the Talacre Sports Centre and Prince of Wales Road. Even then, the new Dalby Street will not be able to take the brunt of the busy traffic.
For everyone, this proposed so-called temporary access is a dress rehearsal for the future access to the Talacre Sports Centre. If anything, the situation is much worse than one might have anticipated.
Councillors, watch out. These are desperate developers who will say anything to get their road closure at Dalby Street. Do not be seduced by their phoney promises. If you say yes to the Dalby Street closure you are inevitably saying yes to the park having to be used in the future to make up for the lack of proper planning and design by these offshore developers.
Mildrid Thomas
Denning Road
NW3
• THE saga of the Dalby Street closure is complex. Residents had been incensed by a proposal by developers to drive an access road across their precious little 2.5 acre park. Some two weeks ago, the developers trumpeted their withdrawal of this damaging proposal.
One might think that was a gesture for commonsense. However, the Talacre Community Sports Centre users and residents have now discovered the reality of their latest proposal (Exhibition to win Dalby minds, February 15).
They are now even angrier than before. The scheme will seriously harm the interests of tens of thousands of users every month. Close to a quarter of million visits are now paid annually to the Sports Centre. As you might imagine between 3pm and 7pm is the busiest time for dropping off and collecting at Talacre. So what do the developers propose? Between 3pm and 7pm vehicle access will be denied to all.
Whichever way one looks at this scheme it is totally invalid and harmful to the public interest.
Peter Cuming
Talacre Road
NW5
• BACK in December I made clear that I would be taking a close personal interest in the Dalby Street proposals. So I have been reading the recent letters in the New Journal about the scheme with great interest.
I received the invitation to attend the public exhibition of the scheme held by the developer a couple of weeks ago and like other concerned residents took the opportunity to look at the detail of the plans on the spot. I was therefore surprised by Dr Elizabeth Weekes’ comment in last week’s New Journal that she was dismayed by my presence at the exhibition. My visit gave me a chance to examine the scale model of the development and I also took the opportunity to remind myself of the layout of the site on the ground and to put the paper plans into context.
I would like to assure residents like Dr Weekes that I have not taken a final view on the proposals. My only aim is to be as familiar as possible about the issues at stake so that I can come to an informed decision when the Council’s Environment (Executive) Sub Group is asked to take a decision on this later in March.
Councillor Keith Moffitt
Leader of the Council
Town Hall
Judd Street
WC1
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