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Mortuary
at foot of garden wins backing
Neighbours protest that 'petition'
swayed planners
BODIES will be stored within touching distance of
back gardens in Tufnell Park after a funeral director won a
planning battle to convert a builders’ yard shed into a
mortuary on Thursday.
Councillors approved eco-funeral directors Green Endings’
plans at a stormy Town Hall meeting. But residents protested
that many of the letters supporting the mortuary, which will
back onto gardens in Oakford Road, were from people living outside
Camden.
Of the 169 letters backing the plans, nearly 100 were not from
the NW5 area. Letters to the Town Hall came from as far afield
as Surrey, Hertfordshire and even Scotland.
Publishing director Robert Brighouse, whose Burghley Road home
will overlook the mortuary, felt the committee had been misled
by the number of letters written supporting the scheme.
He said: “It was an abuse of the process. There were letters
that should not have had any sway on the committee but were
included in the report.
“Getting the letters together was basically a petition
saying it was a well-run business and has no bearing on whether
there should be a mortuary in that space or not.”
Protesters who filled the Town Hall’s public benches on
Thursday – and who said more than 300 letters of objection
were sent – circulated pictures of children leaning over
a garden fence and touching the wall of the shed, to demonstrate
how close the mortuary would be to their back gardens. More
than 70 homes will overlook the new mortuary, which will store
a maximum of eight bodies in a refrigeration unit. It is visible
from bedroom windows and gardens.
Among those who wrote in support of the planning application
was John Jones, a director of PR company Calan Communications
who lives in Tower Hamlets and admitted he had not visited the
site.
He told the New Journal he had met Green Endings director Roslyn
Cassidy at a forum for small businesses, Business Network International,
and had been impressed with her work.
He said: “It seemed to me there was a scaremongering campaign.”
Ms Cassidy said she had searched “high and low” for
possible mortuary sites.
She added: “People have suggested I should go to places
like the Regis Road industrial estate (in Kentish Town) but
funeral directors aren’t classified as industrial units,
so I could never have got planning permission there.”
She hoped that neighbours will gradually come to accept the
mortuary.
Ms Cassidy added: “In the past, when people died they were
laid out in their homes until the funeral. It is only recently
that people have been removed before their funeral, and, in
other countries, such as Ireland, they still are kept at home.
It is a question of perceptions.”
Several businesses in the area wrote to planners enthusing about
the company’s eco-friendly policy and sensitive approach
to funerals.
Newscaster Jon Snow, who lives close to Green Endings’
base in Fortess Road, wrote in a letter of support: “It
(Green Endings) seems to me the kind of business Camden is keen
on attracting and sustaining.”
Actor Roger Lloyd-Pack’s wife Jehane Markham, who lives
in Lady Somerset Road, said she had been impressed with the
service Green Endings offered – and added that she felt
“some people in the area had over-reacted out of fear,
suspicion and ignorance”.
She added: “To say death is not part of the community makes
as much sense as saying that birth is not part of the community.”
The committee voted 5-3 in favour of the conversion. |
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