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Too many are too eager to accommodate big business
• ROBERT Evans, the Director of Argent, has a peculiar idea of democracy, (Letters, December 4).
He seems to think that, once people have elected councillors or members of parliament, that is the end of their entitlement to participate in the democratic process.
Councillors and MPs then, presumably, have authorisation to do exactly as they please for the next four or five years without any more reference to the people they are meant to represent.
Not so. Democracy involves a lot more than just elections.
It also means keeping councillors and MPs aware that they should be carrying out the wishes of the majority of the people.
Too many councillors will fall over themselves to accommodate the needs of big business, like the Argent consortium.
They see their role as smoothing the path for them at every stage.
As for the general public, lip- service is paid to so-called “consultation” meetings.
A certain amount of leeway is built into the initial proposals so that they can be altered or abandoned to give the impression that the developer is willing to adjust their plans, but if the working class or others’ suggestions go against what the developer intends doing anyway, they are ignored.
In reality only the views of large organisations and prospective buyers of the luxury housing etcetera are listened to and acted on.
The people living and working round King’s Cross/ St Pancras want that land to be used for the benefit of ordinary people in the form of low-cost and good-quality housing, and amenities like nurseries, health centres, facilities for youth, plenty of public open space and much lower heights of buildings.
But as Argent’s overriding priority is to maximise the amount of profit that can be made out of all that land, it is proposed to be crammed with yet more offices, luxury homes and hotels, and so on – 67 acres of land, designed to appeal to the well-heeled and business community.
As far as I can see, Michael Edwards and the King’s Cross Railway Lands Group are far more in touch with local people’s wishes than Mr Evans and the rest of the Argent consortium.
Name and address
supplied, N19
Working with Argent
• ROBERT Evans of Argent claims (Letters, December 4) that the scheme now being built has more democratic legitimacy than do the community groups which, over many years, have tried to persuade the local authorities to require a more community-friendly scheme.
For years the Railway Lands Group has had – and we continue to have – support and encouragement from tenants’ associations, a number of resident groups of quite diverse class and ethnic character and from conservation buffs.
Many of the councillors in Camden supported us (both the old Labour council and the new one) and the voting for Argent’s permissions was quite close.
Neither the judicial review in the High Court nor the Triangle public inquiry found against us on grounds of being unrepresentative; but on planning policies and legal issues.
Our view remains that neither Camden nor the mayor ever did enough to protect the low- and middle-income and other weaker residents of the surrounding area from the gentrification pressures which have been building up for decades and are accelerating now, or to secure enough for them from the Railway Lands development.
We have been defeated but we think we are representative of a substantial body of local people.
Now that the Argent scheme has been approved we are working with them to try to make the best of it for local groups.
We are very glad that the construction impact group is looking like being a good tripartite collaboration (like its predecessor on Channel Tunnel Rail Link); we are equally pleased that progress is being made on training and jobs.
We have also supported the continuation of the King’s Cross Development Forum under the Reverend Geoffrey Roper’s chairmanship (despite Camden’s suggestion that it might be put into hibernation) to help inform local people what is happening.
MICHAEL EDWARDS
joint chair, King’s Cross Railway Lands Group
www.kxrlg.org.uk
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