Camden Council are proposing to demolish West Kentish Town Estate, which provides 316 homes, and redevelop it with new mega-blocks containing 898 new homes. The architects have not considered of the scale and context of the area, as we have shown in previous posts on the failure of planning and the scale of the new buildings.
The following views of the proposed scheme have been prepared to show what the proposed building mass will look like in the context of the existing streets. For each set of views, the first is a photo of the existing. The second is the same view with the massing of the proposed new buildings replacing the West Kentish Town Estate blocks. The lines on the new blocks are the heights of each storey.
Below: GRAFTON ROAD LOOKING NORTH
Below: GRAFTON ROAD LOOKING WEST DOWN WARDEN ROAD
Below: GRAFTON ROAD LOOKING WEST DOWN ATHLONE STREET
Below: ATHLONE STREET LOOKING WEST TOWARDS RHYL SCHOOL
Below: TALACRE ROAD LOOKING NORTH
Below: VIEW FROM TALACRE
Below: BASSETT STREET LOOKING SOUTH
Below: ALLCROFT ROAD LOOKING SOUTH
Above: block model looking south (with shadows being cast from the north)
Above: These blocks are inhuman and will dwarf Rhyl School.
Below: VIEW FROM PARLIAMENT HILL, BEFORE AND AFTER
One reason why the development is so out of scale is that Camden is proposing 100 more flats than the planners say is appropriate for the site. In the draft Site Allocations Local plan the planners say the site has capacity for 484 extra homes (see below extract):
However, in the recent planning application for the site (2022/5281/P), it says that Camden are proposing 898 new flats, which is an additional 582 flats. Why do Camden think that such gross overdevelopment is okay?
BETTER WEST KENTISH TOWN is the name of the coalition of local groups campaigning for a better outcome
Email betterwkt@gmail for details
Member groups are:.
Neighbours of West Kentish Town See this website for more details
Queen’s Crescent Neighbourhood Forum,
Inkerman Area Residents Association
Kentish Town Neighbourhood Forum
What can you do to change the course of this barbaric scheme?
- Email your local councillor
- Attend a public meeting (sign up to Better West Kentish Town’s mailing list to keep in touch)
- Object to the current planning application ref. 2022/5281/P (see below)
Environmental Impact Assessment for the West Kentish Town Estate redevelopment
On 2nd December Camden Council submitted a planning application (2022/5281/P) to agree the scope of the required Environmental Impact Assessment for the West Kentish Town Estate redevelopment, which is required to accompany the future planning application for the scheme.
The application seeks to exclude certain considerations from the Environmental Impact Assessment, as follows:
Full details can be seen on the council’s website.
If you do not agree with these exclusions, and want to say anything else about the proposals, please email planning@camden.gov.uk. Give the planning application reference number- 2022/5281/P, and make it clear that you want to register an OBJECTION to the proposed scope of the EIA.
West Kentish Town 
The proposed model for Allcroft Rd looking south: it seems to show the old-style buildings on the right hand side being replaced by new, taller ones. Is this true? Or have I misread the scale?
LikeLike
No,: the Victorian terraced houses on the right will remain: it is the low-rise 1950s blocks on the left which are being replace by TOTALLY inappropriate blocks, built right up to the edge of the pavement and taller than the terrace opposite which will seriously affect their light and view, and necessitating the removal of several (“listed”) old trees and the open grassed spaces around the low-rise blocks. I live in one of those terraced houses and the destruction of our environment by these blocks OUTRAGEOUS!
LikeLike
The proposed model for Allcroft Rd looking south: it seems to show the old-style buildings on the right hand side being replaced by new, taller ones. Is this true? Or have I misread the scale?
Keiran Proffer
LikeLike
Generally, this over-bearing ‘building to margin’ is against Camden’s own guidelines and destructive of any sense of spaciousness, as originally created in the 1960s, and is un-aesthetic and profoundly offensive, an enviromental crime of the first order. I have a particular objection to the destruction of Bassett Street, particularly the destruction of a green triangle village green, which I pass daily. Bassett Street in particular must be left as is.
LikeLike
My comments as above can also apply to the proposed desecration of currently elegant Grafton Road.
As a compromise, perhaps Bassett Street and Grafton Road, in particular, can be left as is, to retain some sense of French village modernist spaciousness. The rest of the proposals can only be described as barbarism on a massive scale…
LikeLike