Holmes Road Depot

The Council has sold the Holmes Road Depot site to developer Yoo Capital for development, under a conditional land sale agreement, without knowing where its replacement will go. Planning permission for Yoo Capital’s film studios should not been granted until this has been confirmed in detail.

Built in the 1970s, the Holmes Road Depot was the base for Camden’s Building Department, now the Housing Repairs Service.

Holmes Road was selected as a site for the new building as it was central to the Borough, see following extract from Camden’s pamphlet of 1975:

However, in 1971 it became apparent that the site of the Lymington Road depot would soon be required for redevelopment for a housing scheme, and the Council acquired a 2-acre site in Holmes Road NW5 for a new centre for the Building Department. Fortunately, the site is approximately in the centre of Camden and is much better placed than Lymington Road for ease of movement to anywhere in the borough. It is also better served by public transport. And its situation, bounded by Holmes Road, Spring Place and the disused railway arches, is likely to cause minimum inconvenience to local residents. The Director, Building Department, presented a comprehensive brief to the Director of Architecture for the design, which wouldnot only cater for all departmental requirements but would also leave room for possible expansion. The details of the plans were thoroughly discussed by all the parties involved, councillors, council officers, the Building Department’s staff and trade unions. When the final design has been approved, the Government agreed that the cost of the scheme should be offset against the value of the land being vacated at Lymington Road, and this enables the scheme to proceed without affecting the rest of the Council’s capital works programme.

In 2021, Camden spent £8.4m refurbishing the depot to make it fit for the future. It’s proposed demolition is therefore a waste of money and environmentally very harmful.

It is now down to Yoo Capital to provide Camden with new facilities for its Building Repairs Service, Housing Department office space and the Borough’s monitoring suite, together with 21 council homes, along with the car pound. The cost of reproviding these facilities is around £60M, money which could be better spent.

There is a big risk that the new depot facilities will not be as good as the existing. This is already shown by the proposed plans for the recycling centre, which is half the size of the existing, see here. It is likely that the replacement Holmes Road depot will also be scaled down and not fit to meet the needs of the Housing Repair Service. The only available site for relocating it is part of an existing parking facility at the back of King’s Cross (Freight Lane, accessed from York Way), which is too far from most of the Borough.

Given the importance of the Housing Repairs Service to about a quarter of the population of Camden, it is not acceptable to play fast and loose with the one remaining depot in Camden’s ownership. Camden’s Community Investment Programme (CIP) is cavalier with its approach to the services on which the Borough depends- the depot is being sacrificed for a ridiculous development proposal which is at odd with what is needed in our community.