|
|
 |
| |
Campaigners prepare to confront councillors at the town hall on Monday |
To sign the Unite Somers Town petition click here.
Library site campaigners’ pressure pays
Town hall bosses agree to summit after demonstration over public land sale
A LAST-DITCH effort by campaigners to ensure housing and community facilities are built on one of the last patches of public land in Camden won over councillors amid emotional scenes on Monday night.
After months on the sidelines, council chiefs appeared swayed by the forceful rhetoric of around 35 protesters who pleaded with them to intervene with government over the imminent sale of the 3.6-acre site behind the British Library.
The site has become the focus of Somers Town residents’ appeals for a fairer share of the area’s rapid redevelopment in the form of sports facilities and homes.
In the council chamber, deputation spokeswoman Candy Udwin said: “Tomorrow the Queen opens the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras. There’s been billions of pounds spent on facilities for the tourists and the well-off. But you only have to go around the corner to where we live to see that there has been nothing for ordinary people.
“This issue seems very simple. Gordon Brown has promised more housing, there are 15,000 on the housing waiting list, and this is government land.
“The British Library land is an acid test for these policies.”
Echoing the chanting protesters who had demonstrated before the meeting, Ms Udwin insisted: “We don’t want ‘affordable housing’, nobody who lives in this area can afford ‘affordable’ housing. We want council housing.”
In his formal response, Lib Dem council leader Keith Moffitt repeated his faith in the council’s 2003 planning brief for the site, which dictates that half the land must be used for housing, regardless of which bidder buys the land from government.
But as the dissatisfied campaigners filed out, they were joined in the cramped confines of committee room four by planning chief Councillor Mike Greene and housing boss Councillor Chris Naylor for a private debate which grew heated on both sides.
In a few minutes, their backs pressed against the wall by the throng surrounding them, they agreed to an urgent intervention with government – a move resisted since the sale was revealed by the New Journal in April.
And for the first time, Cllr Greene also ruled out what is widely seen as the leading contender for the site, a bio-science laboratory run by the government’s Medical Research Council.
“Our planning brief says a medical research facility is not acceptable, and we are not going to deviate,” he said.
The councillors agreed to a summit with campaigners within days, to agree an agenda to take to the site’s owners, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the housing minister, Yvette Cooper.
To sign the Unite Somers Town petition click here. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
