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Leisure centre or a housing estate with swimming pool?
• PLANS for a new leisure centre with surrounding “affordable housing” and playing fields to replace the iconic Sobell Centre look very much like a ruse to develop a housing estate with a swimming pool (Olympic goal: a £20m sports centre, June 6). As for the extension of Kinloch Park (at present night-security locked) into a self-policing green, which will be open 24 hours a day, this would be a nightmare scenario for the inhabitants of Thane Villas and the surrounding area.
For the last few years, Thane Villas dwellers have had a battle royal with the Lib Dem council to rid the children’s park of anti-social elements – drug pushers, pimps and drunks. Kinloch Park incorporates a children’s playing area and backs onto a day nursery.
Under the plans, three or more storey housing positioned behind the Sobell will block views and natural lighting for those who live in Thane Villas. I would like to remind planners of the law of Ancient Lights (1832 Prescription Act), which gives long-standing owners of a building with windows a right to maintain the level of illumination.
The reference to “affordable housing for local inhabitants on the housing list” is the biggest “porky” since the flat-earth advocates! I know this from my experience of trying to get on the list of either “social housing” or so-called “affordable” housing, even though there were several reasons why I qualified. Priority will go to those who can afford to buy town houses or flats and the Lib Dem councillors’ perception of who should take precedence – rather than to local inhabitants on housing lists.
JACK COURTNEY O' CONNOR
Thane Villas, N7
• HAPPY talk by Islington Council about £40million-plus of new sports centres needs to be justified as property boom conditions ended 10 months ago.
Where is all the money to come from to rebuild the Sobell Centre and Finsbury Leisure Centre? Both are heavily dependent on blocks of flats costings more than £20million each.
The buy-to-let bubble has burst. Developers needed buy-to-let investors buying off-plan. There is very little, if any, buy-to-let finance available. Banks generally have tightened their criteria for mortgage lending.
Just up the road from the Sobell, Grainger plc’s Hornsey Road Baths development is nearing completion but it has frozen all new development in London, according to the Financial Times. Grainger is the UK’s largest residential landlord.
The Halifax Bank said on Friday that house prices are falling at the fastest rate since records began 25 years ago. Barratt Developments has warned that housing completions could fall by up to 20 per cent next year. All this hardly denotes a climate for further flats development.
The current Sobell consultation probably will be just a wish list and a dead letter.
LEO CHAPMAN
Dufferin Street, EC1
• OUR Lib Dem leaders have submitted a self-congratulatory question to themselves for the next council meeting asking how they are managing to deliver improved services with one of the lowest council taxes in London. Leaving aside the question of how far services really are improving, at least part of the financial side of the answer is unfortunately being achieved by an outrageous sell-off of community assets.
The latest example of this is the so-called consultation for improving the Sobell Centre, where I as an enthusiastic user of the centre for more than a quarter of a century find myself unable to complete most of the questionnaire because support for any of the four proposed options will be construed by the Lib Dems as support for selling a large part of the site for housing.
Time and time again the Tribune’s pages tell us how little open space we have in the borough, and, while no one will argue the need for more affordable housing in the area, the more people who live here, the more demand there will be for recreational space and facilities.
This is one of very few sites in public ownership with such potential for increasing amenity and open space, and the council’s aim should be to maximise this. Much of the car parking should indeed be removed, as the consultation document suggests, much of the existing landscaping is poorly designed and has little recreational value, and the building itself may well be an inefficient use of space.
But rather than cramming the proposed new sports centre into a shoebox, allowing us a slight expansion to Kinloch Park, and piling housing onto the rest of the site (including even on top of the centre), we should be looking at using the whole site for sport and recreation. Perhaps a bike and skate park/adventure playground/boules pitch/paddling pool/lido set into improved landscaping around the building, with tennis courts, a velodrome, volleyball courts and an open air café on its roof?
What we build at the Sobell should be there for at least 50 years – if properly maintained this time! – and any council worth its salt should be able to find a way of financing such an important community asset over that period, rather than just selling off a chunk of the site to the highest bidder.
Our Lib Dem council goes on about how it wants to listen but once again has already decided in advance what answers it is willing to hear. Come on, Councillor Ruth Polling, give us the chance to show our support for a “no housing” option, using the whole site for sport and recreation, and listen to what the people of Islington really want.
ANDREW MYER
Green Party Highbury Team
Horsell Road, N5
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