Regent Square pleads: Give back cash promised for facelift
Parks dept accused of ‘pulling a fast one’ over developer’s money
Published: 12th May, 2011
by DAN CARRIER
IT is a long-neglected Bloomsbury landmark waiting for a facelift, but plans to give Regent Square a £30,000 spruce-up have suddenly been dropped.
Developers handed over the money as part of a planning deal but Camden Council is looking to spend the cash elsewhere.
Members of Regent Square Residents’ Association are calling on the council to honour a promise to help their corner of the borough.
The £30,000 came from the Passion Group as part of an agreement allowing it to build two blocks of flats in nearby Sidmouth Street. The residents’ association said it would not object to the plans in return for the money being spent on the area. Now it has discovered at least £15,000 earmarked for its patch of greenery is due to be spent elsewhere.
Association treasurer Lee Baker said residents felt betrayed. “We decided not to object to a proposal to build 52 flats just off the square when it came up for decision by councillors earlier this month,” he said. “We decided that, even though the development was larger than the Regent Square terraces, the developer was providing more than strictly required to improve our area and had made changes to the design.”
He added that very little had been spent on the square in recent years, apart from some minor repair work to paths.
Residents hoped the cash would pay for aerating lawns in the square and putting hardier plants in borders.
Mr Baker said that, while residents had worries over the new development making the busy area more built-up, they believed they would at least gain some benefits in return.
He added: “If we had known the parks department was going to pull a fast one and take the money that was supposed to compensate us for development here, we might have objected to the plans.
“We call on councillors to rein in their officers and honour the promises made to our association.”
Regent Square is one of the less well known of the Bloomsbury squares. It was originally a gravel pit, which was turned over to developers to build terraces in 1829.
The square once boasted two churches – it still has the United Reformed Church – but an early chapel dating from 1822 suffered a direct hit from a German bomb in the Blitz. Its famous residents include writer Aldous Huxley and actor William Hartnell, the first Dr Who.
The square’s history includes a brief piece of national notoriety: in 1917 the dismembered body of a woman wrapped in brown paper was discovered there.
Residents’ association secretary Howard Patten said: “There’s an important principle at stake here: should developers’ contributions be used to compensate residents for their street being further built-up, or should they just be spent anywhere the council fancies spending them?”
A council spokesman said no cash would be forthcoming until the development was finished – and it was too early to say where the money would be spent. The spokesman added that they believed the “majority” of the money would go to St George’s Gardens and Regent Square.