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Talacre threat over and above public inquiry
• Further to your report (Public inquiry set to rule on Talacre Gardens road, January 17), after four days it ended with new revelations.
The objectors represented by 10 individuals (four women and six men) were against Camden and the developer working in tandem.
The outcome will not be known for some time (four to 10 weeks) when the inspector will send his findings to Camden, who will still require Ken Livingstone’s stamp of approval should the inspector recommend supporting the closure of Dalby Street.
The road stopping-up, if approved, would entail a smaller replacement road being established to the east of the present street between the existing road and the railway.
For this narrow, bent, road to function, traffic marshals must be in place between one hour before the sports centre opening hour and one hour after closing.
The developers’ expert witness suggested the marshals’ biggest problem might be boredom.
Nevertheless, for about 100 hours a week (weekend hours are only slightly shorter than weekdays) marshals will be “ordering us about”.
We also learned that other than three disabled person’s spaces all existing surface parking – of any kind – will be snuffed out totally. This will eliminate the sports centre staff and discretionary parking.
Sports centre staff sent a letter to the inspector confirming this proposition.
This will adversely affect the ability of the centre to host “family parties”.
Furthermore the ability of many larger vehicles delivering and collecting the handicapped to wait nearby will disappear.
Peter Cuming
Talacre Road, NW5
Privatising the area
• The inquiry (Public inquiry set to rule on Talacre Gardens road, January 17) may determine the future of Treetops and the rest of the sports centre.
There is a real threat.
It is into the development of flats. Not any old flats but ones that will stand between the sports centre and Prince of Wales Road.
To get to the sports centre, parents, children and other users will have to either drive on a new narrow road with no pavements, controlled by marshals, who while the flats are being built will work for the developers and then for the flat owners, or they will have to walk along a pedestrian path.
The flats will be on top of the present road and twice the height of the sports centre.
The new pavement-less road will be up against the flats on the railway side and the pedestrian path against the other side.
Most of the area between the sports centre and Prince of Wales Road will, in effect, have been privatised.
The owners at present are Cornwall Overseas Developments who are owned and controlled by Findon Urban Lofts plc, a UK company, quoted on a foreign stock exchange.
When the flats are built, they will be sold and the owners will then be the owners of the area.
In theory, the agreements that are the subject of the inquiry should make it so that this development has no impact on the present or future of Talacre.
Any costs caused by its needs will be met out of future service charges levied on the owners by Camden.
As one of the objectors sitting though the whole of the inquiry, I found many flaws, any one of which make the scheme unacceptable.
Camden needs to extricate itself from this disastrous mess.
Whatever the outcome of the inquiry, this won’t go away!
Nick Harding
St Ann’s Gardens, NW5
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