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Will care home plan drive older people indoors?
• I WOULD like to pick up on points made about the redevelopment of the Charlie Ratchford Centre (Why can’t the council run the care homes? Letters June 26).
Councillor Penny Abraham wrote about the “elaborate plans” for this centre, and Councillor Martin Davies about the new centre being developed within the next five years.
The redevelopment of the centre was the subject of a recent consultation process.
For me there were two main problems with this consultation.
It basically asked “do you want a new development for the Charlie Ratchford or should it be refurbished”? But some of the key disadvantages to the new build were not presented.
First the proposed site for the new Charlie Ratchford Centre, in Crogsland Road, is a much smaller piece of land than the current site. So any redevelopment will be much, much smaller than that which the older people attend at present.
In addition those who come to the Charlie Ratchford Centre now have access to a decent-sized garden.
I cannot see how this facility could be provided on the new site. What a shame that the new centre will be so much smaller and without outside space. I am sure many of those who access this centre do not have a garden of their own and will therefore spend the majority of their time indoors when the new place is built, even on sunny days.
Secondly, a big disadvantage for the residents of Belmont Street is the plan for redeveloping the site after the centre moves.
Nobody has been consulted on this part of the proposal.
I understand that it will be redeveloped into an eight-storey block of flats.
Belmont Street is already a crowded, narrow, cul-de-sac, containing the 10-floor tower block Hardington, surrounding houses and part of the Denton estate.
We have problems with parking especially in the evenings, with the Roundhouse close by.
A large new housing development will make for a disagreeably densely populated street.
The residents of Hardington, who currently live in a pleasant, light, 10-floor block will be over-looked and enshrouded in shadow by the new development.
It will dominate Belmont Street and turn it into a dark, close, cramped, over-populated place to live.
We knew that the small patch of land in Crogsland Road which is the proposed site for the new Charlie Ratchford Centre was to be redeveloped.
Originally (when it was part of the Haverstock School redevelopment) we were told it was to be flats.
I believe the council saw it could make a bigger buck by selling off the Charlie Ratchford site, moving it and trying to convince people that smaller would be better. What a shame older people’s services and the lives of Camden residents will be diminished in the process.
KATY NEX
Hardington
Belmont Street, NW1
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