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All hush hush over Dalby Street plan
Housing association refuses to talk about scheme
NOT-for-profit landlords the Community Housing Group have closed ranks with the tight-lipped property developers behind a proposed seven-storey flat complex which has sparked a furious response in Kentish Town.
Despite repeated calls from the New Journal, the Chalk Farm Road-based housing association refused to discuss its role in a joint enterprise with Trac Properties Ltd to build 55 apartments above two restaurants on land next to Talacre Sports Centre, in Dalby Street.
The proposals, which involve the demolition of a derelict house on Prince of Wales Road and the construction of a new access road, have sparked widespread protests from residents and users of adjacent Talacre Gardens.
Campaigners believe that the plans threaten their park and impinge on public open space, despite council assurances.
A Community Housing Group (CHG) spokeswoman refused a New Journal request to interview Chief Executive Mick Sweeney and said no-one from the team overseeing the project could discuss it, despite the fact that CHG is a co-signatory to the planning application approved by Camden Council in January.
She said: “We are just a development partner, you’ll need to speak to the developer. We would be unwilling to discuss it.”
In four further conversations she refused to comment, although she said that Trac Properties had been contacted and informed that the New Journal was keen to discuss the project.
Under the proposals as submitted to the council, CHG would be responsible for the 19 ‘affordable housing’ units being built into the scheme- and for which CHG has provisionally secured £2 million from the Housing Corporation.
Architects plans show them as ‘self-contained’ and accessed by a separate staircase from the apartments being built for private sale.
Although CHG’s 25-year history of involvement in social housing in the borough is widely publicised, Dalby Street does not appear on CHG’s published ‘development pipeline’ of future projects.
The main developer, Trac Properties Ltd, has kept a low profile since the Dalby Street row broke out in the New Journal’s letter pages. Registered to an accountant’s office in Marylebone, where staff refuse to take or pass messages, the company used CHG’s address to log the planning application and has been uncontactable for 10 days.
There has so far been no response to residents’ claims that the developer has sought permission to create a temporary access road through Talacre Gardens – an option the council refuses to deny having discussed – or to protests over the developer’s proposed ‘new’ Dalby Street, which campaigners believe will create a traffic hazard.
Architects Chassey and Last joined CHG in declining to discuss the project without Trac’s permission, and refused to allow the New Journal copyright permission to publish artist’s impressions of the proposed new complex – which are available to view on the internet and at the Town Hall.
A spokeswoman for Chassey and Last, whose development track record includes the Jazz café in Camden Town and Blackburn House in Hampstead, said it “would not be fair” to comment on even the technical aspect of the case while the developer remained “on holiday”.
The New Journal can also reveal that council-owned land crucial to the site has been pledged to the developer. The fenced wasteland to the rear of 52 Prince of Wales Road, which was occupied by three travellers families until they were bought off last year, has been slated for sale to Trac by Camden Council.
A council press official said: “In 2005, the council entered into a conditional contract to sell the land described as the former travellers site, to the developers.
“The terms of the sale are confidential as they are commercially sensitive.”
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