Dear Jules Pipe,
I write apropos of your recent exchange with Andrew Boff about Good Growth funding of improvements to Queen’s Crescent, NW5. The issues are germane to the Assembly’s ongoing investigation of Social value in planning and regeneration.
£3m of public money is going into the Queen’s Crescent improvements.
£2m comes from the Mayor of London’s Good Growth Fund which has three pillars according to you – “empowering people”, “improving places” and “growing prosperity”. Around 2021, the original improvements were fused with an active travel scheme which led to Queens Crescent’s pedestrianisation and other local road closures.
Camden is coy about the economic improvement side of things, preferring warm words about “public realm”, active travel, 15-minute cities, parklets, greening and co-design. In many people’s opinion, it is typical that Camden has fetishised streateries that they genuinely expected to pop into existence on QC with pedestrianisation in 2021. No streateries have appeared spontaneously.
Good Growth’s theme of economic equality comes with a strong commitment to systematic evaluation which is challenging for Camden since local business hasn’t felt economic improvement since 2021. Shopkeepers speak of a decline in takings, loss of regular customers, shedding staff etc.
Because QC’s retail and supply chain workforce consists in large part of people of colour, there is an equalities dimension to shopkeepers’ complaints. In fact, their economic loss was prefigured in the 2021 equalities impact assessment carried out by Camden to support the introduction of road closures. It acknowledges a risk of “Financial impairment for ethnic minority businesses that will suffer loss and be forced to close” and concerns that “Most businesses on Queen’s Crescent are run by families from ethnic minority backgrounds and have been negatively impacted by the road closures and loss of customers”
These worries were dismissed by Camden’s officers e.g.
“Officers do not consider the proposed changes to have any negative impact on Ethnicity or race.. Ethnic minority businesses can get a benefit from the outdoor seating to promote food and products from other cultures. More shared spaces could enable ethnic minorities to gather and socialise, express experiences and ideas gained from their origins and form social bonds”
Camden’s unwillingness for their implementation of the QC improvements to be scrutinised and their stilted remarks on opportunities for “ethnic minorities to gather and socialise, express experiences and ideas gained from their origins and form social bonds” are signs of what’s wrong. The mess they’ve made of the evaluation process required by the GLA is particularly egregious. They failed to measure baseline conditions or appoint an independent evaluator or agree a framework for evaluation before work starts, all of which were requirements. Much more about the failure to carry out structured evaluation is set out in the attached PDF which it may help you to read.
Nor was a proper economic study of the QC economy done before seeking a GLA grant in 2018. We have had instead an imposition of council officer opinion shored up by selective use of data (see Dr Hill’s helpful review of the use of MasterCard data supplied by the GLA). It hardly needs to be said that the 2021 QC shopkeeper petition against road closures was ignored. I’ve attached it for good measure.
In your letter to Andrew Boff dated 24th February, you wrote that a “deed of variation” was drawn up and signed by Camden and the GLA to formalise changes to the “deliverables” expected from the Queen’s Crescent work. I am awaiting clarification from Camden about the contents of the deed. No public statement about the deed or the change in direction it formalised was made at the time it was drawn up.
Last week, an FoI return brought to light Camden’s payments to consultants working on the Queen’s Crescent improvements.
£309,750.50 – Architectural Services
£191,052.32 – Project Management (Scheme development & Market Strategy)
£54.122.28 – Co-design process
£100,391.25 – Project management support (design development & implementation)
£14,913.50 – Specialist electrical and lighting design
£6,195.00 – Highways specialist design
On the face of it, a third of the Good Growth Fund grant has gone to consultants. The fee paid for architectural services is eye-watering. The project management fee is similar particularly given the protracted nature of the project. You should ask to see the market strategy which is a poor document. It’s a desktop exercise that lacks new or original research let alone any genuine fieldwork: it’s a rehash of old work and a lazy redeployment of Camden’s fellow-travellers in the third sector. It is utterly cynical.
What I am bringing to your attention is a very shabby affair. I hope you can help us, the ordinary people in the neighbourhood, make those responsible accountable.
Of course I understand that GLA is managing a global city and has more important matters to consider than a neighbourhood centre in Kentish Town. But the challenge remains to convert commitments to sharing economic growth fairly into the right sort of improvements for places like Queen’s Crescent.
West Kentish Town 