Camden New Journal - News: ‘Lift 6pm curfew at offices’

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Camden New Journal - by DAN CARRIER
Published: 15 November 2007

John Sutherland on his balcony with the block in the background

‘Lift 6pm curfew at offices’

IT sounds like an office worker’s dream – a law that says you must quit your desk by six each evening or land your boss in serious trouble.
But a 6pm curfew imposed on the year-old Nelson House development in Mornington Crescent – to protect residents living next door – is being blamed by estate agents for the failure to let the offices. Now they want the curfew lifted.
The offices, built on the site of a derelict bakery in Carlow Street, have been viewed as a potential London base of Current TV, the news and culture station set up by former American vice-president Al Gore. The bakery had been empty for more than a decade and been squatted until it was knocked down and offices built.
Architect Michael Goldfinger, the son of renowned Hampstead-based modernist designer Erno Goldfinger, who is acting for the owners, said: “It has had planning permission to use as an office since 1986. When it was derelict, the people living nearby had many more problems.”
But residents of flats next door say there is a good reason for the original planning restrictions, as the office block is close to their homes.
Academic John Sutherland, a former chairman of the Man Booker literary prize judging panel who lives next to the offices, said: “We are so close that if someone were to smoke a cigarette on the balcony, we’d smell it.
“Permission was given to build a block that was basically too close to our homes, which means it needs this curfew. The applicants accepted the restrictions then and there is no need to change them.”
Neighbours are also concerned about extra traffic and noise. They say that children play in the cul-de-sac in the evenings and at weekends.
“The residents like this proof of community vitality – more so as there is no nearby playground for the buildings’ kids,” they have told planners.
Estate agent Edward Charles, of the Marylebone High Street firm which hopes to let the building, has said that lifting the curfew would lead to a busier and vibrant environment – “one where break-ins and burglaries would be less easy to perpetrate”.

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