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Thought of destroying park is unbearable
• ON visiting Camden from Ireland I am horrified to learn about the Talacre debacle. The Green Fair which I used to organise once benefited from the hospitality of Talacre Gardens.
Talacre Gardens is well on the way to maturing into a beautiful park. It is unimaginable that the council would allow a developer to encroach upon it, let alone have a road driven through it.
Developers have sadly become the new kings and the Town Hall officials who are paid for by the taxpayers seem to act as their courtiers. Why grant them such anti-social concessions?
Developers can always find engineering ways to get round problems of digging deep structures without having to depend on park land and other public spaces nearby.
Nigel Slater in his letter (Park debacle is costing our trust, November 23), suggests very sensibly that in circumstances where the public has lost trust in their local government and their planning department that the matter of the closure of Dalby Street should be determined through a public inquiry. Whatever the merits or failures of the Dalby Street scheme, it is hard to disagree with him.
JOHN JOPLING
Cloughjordan
County Tipperary
Ireland
• DURING September, as a result of seeing an official notice attached to a Dalby Street lamp, I was alerted to the proposed “stopping up of Dalby Street.”
Inspection of official plans in the Town Hall included a proposed temporary access road enabling users to directly access the Talacre Sports centre throughout the building programme.
This temporary access plan conditioned my attitude to the entire proposal and I decided an objection to the closure was not necessary.
Imagine my discomfort and fury to learn that the plan displayed until September 29 was a ‘hoax’ as the developer was planning a different temporary access route slicing the park in two parts.
It is morally repugnant to trick the public and it is imperative that the stopping-up procedure be annulled and a new process of consultation started.
Failure to follow normal procedures is not what we pay our public servants for.
A EDHOUSE
Talacre Road
NW5
• I HAVE accessed the contract between the developer and Camden over the Dalby Street scheme. It is made very clear in it that any decision with respect to the encroachment of Talacre Gardens is subject to the council’s approval.
If the council let the residents of Camden down, then they will only have themselves to blame if the electorates refuse to forget any complicity in this shameful affair.
CAROLINE ARBUTHNOTT
Church Row
NW3
• I AM moving towards a career in journalism. Any idealism I might have had about politics, however, is being sapped by the Dalby Street affair.
This is a drama which has been unfolding right under my nose and is causing widespread distress locally.
A private developer bought a derelict house at 52 Prince of Wales Road a few years ago for the modest sum of £190,000 and had the bright idea that he wanted to acquire the local highway next to this property (Dalby Street) plus a chunk of the adjacent open space.
Despite massive local objections, the developer eventually got planning permission to build a whopping big 7 storey building scheme that is so ambitious that the boundaries for the project keep on expanding. The developer is now eyeing Talacre Gardens. He wants to have a road running through our popular park. This intrusion into our public space is actually being seriously considered by our newly elected council. It is now obvious that the developer himself knew long ago his scheme needed more land to work, but bided his time.
Yet our council seems willing to throw away more of our open space in his direction. At first, in the guise of temporary access to the sports centre. But everyone realises it will not stop there. The temporary access which will serve some 200,000 visitors per year will become permanent and ruin the park forever.
There is no democratic representation in Camden. The council seems to do whatever they want irrespective of commonsense or local views. The Camden new Journal appears to be the only voice local residents have.
What will it take to save Talacre Gardens and its dismayed residents?
JOHN PORTCH
Wilkin Street
NW5
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