Camden New Journal - Letters: A big victory in corner shop dispute

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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 23 August 2007

A big victory in corner shop dispute

• I AM pleased to be able to be able to report that the long-running campaign to save a popular local corner shop in Kentish Town had a big victory this week.
Top Value Supermarket on the corner of Falkland Road and Fortess Road was threatened with closure in December last year, when the landlords tried to divide it up into a financial unit and a residential unit.
Camden turned the plans down, and this week the planning inspector upheld that decision – hundreds of people who signed our petition will breathe a sigh of relief.
But this case has highlighted the weakness of our planning laws in protecting local communities.
The sadness is that Top Value was saved not because the planning laws value local shops, but because the landlords’ plans happened to be ill-thought out in other respects.
All too often I see landlords in this area ploughing ahead with hare-brained schemes which would damage the local community.
We saw another one at the other end of Falkland Road very recently, where residents’ views carried little weight with planners.
The planning laws in this country don’t go far enough to support local shops and local residents.
The Labour government needs to wake up and realise that if it wants to foster strong communities in Britain, it could start by a serious reform of the planning laws.
cllr ralph scott
Liberal Democrat Kentish Town ward

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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