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Dalby Street closure a recipe for disaster
• A DRAFT Servicing Management Plan for the proposed New Dalby Street makes for astonishing reading. David Vivian Felix, a retired developer, wrote to question the validity of the controversial scheme (Let’s hope Ken kicks park plan into touch, April 19).
Puzzled he may be by the ballyhoo over this issue.
I asked the Town Hall for a copy of the paperwork.
It turns out Camden Council and the developer concerned with Dalby Street are planning a traffic management scheme of overwhelming deviation and considerable improbability.
Euphemistically it is called “an active on-site management regime” involving new by-laws, and procedures of the utmost complexity that would flummox mission-control at Cape Kennedy.
My concern is that whatever is agreed behind closed doors should be entirely funded by the developer and not lead to Camden Council picking up the tab or being ‘forced’ to use Talacre Gardens as a traffic route.
The Traffic Management Plan is described as relevant “throughout the life of the development”. As this is likely to be over 100 years, we must demand that adequate and secure funding for traffic management is guaranteed.
A certified bond of not less than £5 million is imperative to ensure that the people of Camden are protected from any default by whomever develops ‘New Dalby Street’.
EHRENFRIED LIEBICH,
Parliament Hill, NW3
• THE public is right to still be concerned about the Dalby Street road closure and to demand a public enquiry (Launch enquiry on road closure, Time to be good sport, Mayor, April 26).
No one seems to have thought things through regarding the impact of this Dalby Street scheme.
For instance, our council will expect parents to drop their kids at Talacre Road and have them walk to the sports centre through the park when prevented by the developer’s traffic marshals to use the new Dalby Street. Fair enough, except for the following:
Improbably, the developer is planning to relocate staff parking into the park where the cars will be blocking the entrance to Talacre Gardens and, by the same token, to the entrance of the sports centre.
In the winter, the park closes at 4pm when it gets dark. Closure was shown to be essential if trees were not to be vandalized repeatedly. The Sports Centre closes around 10pm. Are we to expect that the park will be kept open at dark, unattended and left vulnerable to vandalism, gangs of youths, drug dealers
and other miscreants? That used to be the case until the park was finally locked at dusk and crime plummeted.
The Dalby Street road closure as proposed is a sure recipe for disaster – it is the opposite of what we all understood to be proper town planning.
ST SCOTT
Harmwood Street, NW1
• LAST week’s letters (Time to be good sport, Mayor, Launch enquiry on road closure, April 26) call upon Ken Livingstone to show a more sensible approach to the stopping up of Dalby Street. When even lay people in our locality can see there is something very wrong with the developer’s proposals for this road closure, then the Mayor should, if he has any judgement at all, call for a full public enquiry.
If the proposals are as sound as the new coalition (Lib Dem and Conservative) would have us believe, then they have nothing to fear from such an enquiry. An independent inspector will give the road closure a green light.
If, however, the Talacre Sports Centre and Talacre Gardens are in jeopardy as a result of Dalby Street being handed over to a private developer, then the inspector will force him to modify his scheme.
The neighbourhood will have been spared the anxiety of either losing their precious amenities or having them reduced.
PATRICE TAVARES
Weedington Road, NW5
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