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Phone box is a slap in the face for our community
• I CAN confirm, from personal experience and observation, some of the points made your news item “Blunder lets a phone box back on High Street” (November 5).
The phone in the box does not work. The box is used, as I suspect you’re aware, mostly to shelter pedestrians from rain, and occasionally for what looks very much like opportunistic drug dealing. We have occasionally noticed a smell of urine as well.
The booth is so positioned as to block visual access for CCTV cameras. The construction of this booth must seem like a slap in the face to anyone involved over the past years in the complex task of making this area livable, neighbourly, and drug-free.
The banner advertising on the side is unmissable.
I would, in fact, not call it simply banner advertising. What has been imposed in a vulnerable public space in Camden High Street is an advertising hoarding. The phone box itself may be ignored by its owners, but this hoarding is not. The advertising content is regularly changed, and the glass is regularly cleaned. The owners of this construction are clearly aware of its commercial value.
Let me make this absolutely clear: an advertising hoarding has been inserted directly athwart the line of pedestrian traffic in a public space 15 feet below the windows of our home.
What disciplinary action has been taken against those responsible in the planning department for allowing this insulting mix-up to occur? At the moment, it looks as though the only party paying for this mess is everyone else.
Judith Clute
Member, Camden Town With Primrose Hill Safer Neighbourhoods Panel
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