|
|
 |
| |
This road ‘marshals’ idea will mean disaster ahead
• REGARDING your Comment (The ‘marshals’ plan could mean further conflict, May 29), the proposal to close Dalby Street will not only affect a few disgruntled local residents, but a wide variety of people, young and old, from across the borough.
Each year, more than 250,000 Talacre Community Sports Centre users come from all corners of Camden and some further a field.
The occupiers of the proposed 55 flats at the Dalby Street building, who will pay dearly for the costs of employing these so-called road marshals, will be competing for their fair share of this replacement route to the sports centre. This, a winding, is narrower than the present Dalby Street and lacking a footpath on either side.
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to predict disaster ahead. Soon the day will come when the overseas developers will have left the area, the marshals will have proven useless to overcome the lack of road space and the tenants at the new building scheme will revolt, being fed up with having to pay huge bills for keeping such marshals employed forever after.
How long, one wonders, before our council resorts to encroaching, the adjacent Talacre Gardens and seeks to build a secondary road across the park to make up for the incapacity at the New Dalby Street?
Dalby Street is a vital access to public amenities and it should remain, as part of the Queen’s Highway, in the ownership of the residents of Camden.
Celine La Freniere
Co-ordinator, Talacre Gardens Neighbourhood Watch
Affordable? Not likely!
• NICK Harding echoes the view of many local residents when he compares the situation at Millfield Lane with Dalby Street (An even more serious question of access, May 29).
The disruption and loss of amenity to Hampstead Heath users was thought so outrageous, even for a 30-month period, that it resulted in the council sensibly turning down the proposals by a private developer.
Not so in gritty Kentish Town where we have been subjected to countless threats by a developer intent on taking over the only road access to the successful Talacre Community Sports Centre. This would mean using marshals to direct traffic from Prince of Wales Road to the sports centre, with all the inconvenience, forever.
Are we not just as important here in Haverstock ward as those who live near and/or frequent the Heath?
We are meant to accept major, undesirable, changes at Prince of Wales Road to accommodate the private developer at Dalby Street. We will lose Dalby Street and the front yard of the sports centre to allow an oversized building to tower over this important local amenity. Why?
For all the bother he is likely to cause us, the few affordable flats the developer is proposing to build do not sound affordable at all.
John Kilgallon
Athlone Street, NW5
Idiotic affair
• THE Dalby Street affair has been a disturbing saga right from the start. Private developers, aided and abetted by our own officers, cooked up this idiotic scheme and applied for planning permission in 2004. Local residents could not find proper information about this scheme to guide them. Suspicions of encroachment into the adjacent Talacre Gardens proved right. Permission was granted to encroach into the park to accommodate a restaurant.
Another planning permission, sought in 2005 by the same developers, resulted in a behind-the-scenes agreement allowing the developers to drive a road across the park, dividing it in two.
A recent inquiry into the road closure of Dalby Street proposed using a big chunk of the park to make space for a parking lot.
Camden is not an innocent bystander. Right from the start those responsible for this unholy alliance with the developers knew that without using the park the scheme was likely to falter. Even residents not usually clued up on matters of planning can see that happening.
Their recent solution to the Dalby Street road closure, which cannot work and should be denied, is to impose road marshals to direct the traffic (Comment, May 29). The developers will become the owners of this private road which replaces Dalby Street and will decide who is allowed into the New Dalby Street and when.
No one will win.
The Talacre sports centre users who come from outside Haverstock ward will be discouraged from using the road and will soon seek entertainment elsewhere.
The owners and tenants in the 55 flats proposed by the developers will be greatly inconvenienced by a haphazard arrangement whereby deliveries will have to be planned in advance and access will be limited. To add insult to injury they (including the social housing occupiers) will have to fork out the cost for the traffic marshals. This will add at least £60 a week, per flat, to their service charges.
When will the council finally call it quits?
David V Felix
Southampton Road, NW5
Developer must pay
• AS I understand it, the residents of the new 55 flats, even those living in the affordable properties, will have to pay for these traffic marshalsfrom their own pocket (Comment, May 29).
Figures bandied around vary from £60-£100 per week. No one in my position, a social housing resident, could afford such extravagance. The cost of the marshals is likely to be met by the taxpayers through benefit payments. Our community has gone through some trying times, always keeping a watchful eye on the Dalby Street developer, eager to encroach on our local park with his seven-storey scheme. It is terrifying for local residents to realise just how close he came to building a road across Talacre Gardens.
Now the developer wants to take over an important road access to the popular Talacre Sports Centre, and replace it with an inferior route. The cost to employ the traffic marshals should be met by the developer, as part of his cost for getting the road closure he seeks. A bond sufficient to meet these costs should be required up front. Any other arrangement is totally unacceptable.
Maria Portch
Athlone House, NW5
|
 |
|
| |
|
|
|
