Chaos in Gospel Oak

Cllr Danny Beales has been asked to comment on long standing issues that affect life in Gospel Oak, including the need for the following actions:

• REVERSING the gross dereliction of the Cheriton Corner at the junction of Queen’s Crescent and Malden Road which is in contradiction to the Queen’s Crescent public realm improvement work
• SETTING a firm date for the commencement of work on the Queen’s Crescent public realm improvements which have been delayed on multiple occasions. The current position is: “We will shortly provide more information about when the street works will commence”. Six weeks on and no more information has been provided
• PUBLISHING the Queen’s Crescent market development strategy which Inner Circle Consulting passed to Camden for final tweaks in August or earlier
• REMOVING the unwanted hoarding around the copper beech tree garden on Grafton Road well over a year after Camden officially reversed their plan to sell the “site”
• COMPLETING Bacton Low Rise phase 2 or at least getting a “development partner” in place to do the work that Camden is too financially embarrassed to carry out itself
• FIXING a date for the Wendling regeneration
• PROVIDING a better design for the West Kentish Town Estate redevelopment. It remains an urban design mystery why Maitland Park (4-5 storeys on Grafton Terrace), Kiln Place (3 storeys) and Cherry Court (4-5 storeys) are sensibly scaled whereas the WKTE scheme has blocks of 7, 8, 10, 12 and 14 storeys
• SETTING OUT a repairs and maintenance programme for the poor, abused and put-upon residents of West Kentish Town Estate who have funded the HRA by around £22m in the last 20 years and only seen about £3.8m spent on their estate’s upkeep
• EXPLAINING how Camden is going to green its housing stock. The current Gospel Oak 7&8 M&E refit seems to be predicated on continued fossil fuel use with no obvious conversion path for the new kit that’s being installed
• REINSTATING a fraction of the neighbourhood workspace lost through inept planning over the last 30 years and in particular in the last 12 when CIP has dominated Camden thinking. We’re now into a looking-glass world where Camden solemnly talks about the challenge of affordable workspace without acknowledging the extent to which it trashed it in the first place..and in fact continues to destroy it at Regis Road and Camley Street.