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Misleading Sport England
• UPDATING opposition to the Dalby Street development at Talacre, a decision was taken by campaigners some months ago to keep quiet and to give Camden and the developer time and space to resolve what is evidently an impossible situation.
So far they have not done so. In essence, the developer claimed to have actually started the development more than nine months ago and thus to have beaten the deadline for starting.
Having spent less than one per cent of the construction costs on demolishing a derelict building and apparently digging some piles, he has done nothing except use the travellers’ site which, along with Dalby Street itself he is registered as owning, to park a shipping container and cars.
To reach this point in the approval process, councillors, the Greater London Authority and Sport England had to be satisfied that the sports centre will not be disadvantaged. To satisfy them, agreements have been signed and assurances given which are unworkable, contradictory or plain wrong.
One letter can’t do justice to the extent of this failure so I will give one example here.
The agreed documents setting out how pedestrians will get to and from the sports centre contain two mutually contradictory requirements.
On the one hand, the signed agreement says “That visibility along the pedestrian access way shall be such that there shall be no areas that cannot be seen by a pedestrian walking along the footpath”. However, this cannot be achieved on account of the way having obstructive columns on its route.
In a letter to me, the director of culture and environment wrote: “The council does not believe that the consents issued are unimplementable or that the agreements linked to those consents are unenforceable. If there was any breach of the relevant agreements the council would take steps to secure compliance”.
Is she referring to the possibility of the building having no columns which would be a breach of the planning consent?
Or does she mean that they stay and then Camden tells the developer he must pull the building down as it breaches the agreement on there being no areas that cannot be seen by someone walking along the footpath? It has to be one or the other.
This is no small matter. At present the public – mainly patrons of the sports centre, the children’s playground and the park – can walk on either of two open footways on each side of a road. That is being substituted by a 2.5metre wide footway overhung by and against a building on one side and a park (which closes at 4pm in the winter) boundary on the other.
Camden, it seems, is so terrified by the prospect of being sued by the developer that it will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid facts and is prepared to blatantly mislead.
An example of the latter can be found in the letter sent to Sport England where, in attempting to persuade them that pedestrians are adequately catered for, it said: “The route through Talacre Park is short, well-lit and safe.”
Did they not realise that the park closes at dusk (when presumably it is “well-lit”).
Sport England could hardly be expected to know that was untrue.
Nick Harding
St Ann’s Gardens, NW5
www.savetalacre.co.uk
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