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Stop the dilly-dallying and give us protection for park
• THERE seems to be a question mark in the borough solicitor’s mind as to whether the Talacre Open Space qualifies for Town Green status under the new Commons Act 2006 (Residents fail in bid to use legislation to protect cherished green areas of borough, June 26).
For this status to be established, residents would have to provide proof that they have used Talacre “as of right” for 20 years.
We can provide the names of many people who have used the Talacre Open Space since the early 1970s and are still alive and remember it all, but we also have a documentary film of the same people when they were children enjoying Talacre and fighting the council to get the space turned into a park.
The 1972 film, The Amazing Story of Talacre, was recently discovered in a clean-out of Old Hampstead Town Hall. It has since acquired something of a cult following.
It shows happy children playing on the Blitz site, hundreds of parents canvassing a reluctant council to give this piece of land to residents deprived of outdoor space of their own, and actors devoting their summer holidays to organise activities for local kids in their new playground at Talacre.
That is what a community is all about, and it doesn’t come stronger than in Talacre.
Talacre Gardens is a natural for Town Green status.
If anyone still has any doubt, they can get in touch with me at Kentish Town Community Centre to arrange an informal showing of this fabulous film.
It is worth seeing for the music, dancing, street theatre and general hilarity, as well as the cameo appearance of Peter Cook at a Talacre jumble sale in 1971.
Stop dilly-dallying and give the Talacre residents the protection they need for their park, now and for future generations.
CATHY CRAWFORD
Chairwoman of Trustees
Kentish Town Community Centre, NW5
Talacre outrage
• LIKE Nick Harding (Outrage of campaigners over Talacre under threat, July 3), I sat through the June 19 executive (environment) sub-group meeting in some astonishment.
It seems these four sub-group members are the only people in Camden who still believe this development makes any sense. One member even claimed that pedestrians will be better off because they will have a 2.5m wide x 55m long path as the only route to the sports centre after dark whereas at present the existing Dalby Street has pavements each of which are less than 2.5m wide!
We trust our councillors in Kentish Town and Haverstock wards can surely picture what is really likely to happen. The numbers of users of the sports centre will stop increasing year on year because people will be put off coming. No one is seriously suggesting that, because this demonstrates the “experiment” has failed then the building should be pulled down. So the solution has to be to make people feel safer. That could mean security guards at each end of the passage, at least after dark and perhaps even in the light.
If that and similar costs have to be incurred, in the jargon, to “safeguard the public amenity”, will one of those involved reassure us that such costs will be met? For example, Aiden Brookes who I understood sat through the public inquiry and is Camden’s lawyer might comment. Or Yonathan Laznik of Findon Urban Lofts, the developer, who will need to warn the buyers of the 36 private flats that their service charges are liable to increase to pay for such costs.
At the meeting I asked the committee members the following question: “Imagine a couple of kids wearing hoodies, lurking about the entrance. On a gloomy winter’s evening how many would push past them – entering this overhung pedestrian way? Even the fear of this could dissuade many from using the sports centre.”
Similar questions need to be answered for the vehicular access, for deliveries, for the situation when the sports centre needs to renovate or wants to expand. What sort of world are these people living in? Does the developer realise what he has bought into?
MARTIN PLAUT
Address supplied, NW5
Our heritage
• TALACRE is not just a blot on the Camden map.
The people who live in and around here are a close-knit community. Most live in social housing properties. They have little or no access to any sort of yard or green space.
Our park and its community centre are part of our heritage and we must and will fight for their preservation, just as we fought successfully for the Kentish Town swimming baths and all the concessions we won, so far, at Talacre Gardens after long campaigns.
We fought for the kids to have a free pitch to play football, then Talacre Gardens needed a full-time warden to keep the park safe and well tended, and then a hut so the warden could store his tools and shelter from the elements. We looked after each other.
Now we hear that the council does not quite believe we mean business. They intend to carry out a survey. We are fed up with answering surveys about parking control, buses, the Dalby Street scheme, the improvements at Prince of Wales Road and now about Talacre Gardens.
Every week we get some other survey through our post. Yet no matter what we say on those forms, the council just turn around and do what they like.
Sometimes they don’t even wait for the end of the date of the survey before going ahead.
Some people around here see the survey about a Town Green in a positive light. Others see it as a procrastination on the part of Camden Council. We know they have already made up their mind, so why, as Beverly Gardner says in her letter (July 3), do they insist on “prolonging the agony”?
GRENDA GILLEGOA
Talacre Road, NW5
Trust risk
• IT is encouraging the cou ncil is having second thoughts about rejecting a new status for Talacre Gardens (Eleventh-hour intervention really has brought some hope, July 3).
However, all the talk of the “creation of a trust a lease of the land” is less reassuring. One hears of parks run by a trust, like Braintree in Essex. It lives a hand-to-mouth existence and relies heavily on volunteers. It struggles each year to survive. Is this what we want for Talacre?
People around here have little cash to spare. There are no hidden millionaires to rescue our park should it get into trouble. A trust would be a new anxiety replacing the old anxiety of losing the park.
RENE ADMAS
Wilkin Street, NW5
BEST HOPE
• TALACRE is an essential open space because, small though it is, it is the only one for the 11,000 or so inhabitants of this ward.
Despite its size, it provides the play area, sports area, dog-walking area, as well as the trees, flowers and grass which help make life liveable for the residents of a lot of high density housing. who know their open space needs protection.
Car park, access roadway and sitting out area for a café have all been proposed in recent months for various parts of this space, leading those of us who prize it to recognise that only fairly determined measures can deliver any chance for its continued, unmolested existence. Town Green status would be the best hope.
JAMES BRANDER
Hadley Street, NW1
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Your comments:
IT isn't very long ago that Talacre was full of tramps and beer cans, neglected flower beds and all that makes one shudder when one thinks of a Town Green. Then of course it was occupied by the National Grid for a short time and that made it unusable by anyone in
their right minds. Shouldn't it be called The Common or even Tall Acre? Anything but Town Green which just sounds like an episode of the BBC's shudderingly awful Children's TV show of the 1960's, Trumpton?
C. & J. VIZARD
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