‘Cell Block H’ old folks’ home plan approved - 60 room Maitland Park site will be grim for pensioners, say campaigners
Published: 29 December 2010
by TOM FOOT
COUNCIL chiefs say their “care home dreams” have come true after a plan to build a major old people’s home was pushed through under pressure from officials.
But campaigners have warned that the 60-room, four-block council development in Maitland Park will prove a grim home for future generations of elderly patients.
Lynn Whiting, who lives in Haverstock Hill, said: “It feels that, if someone is disabled or old, we just discard them. We are not treating the elderly with dignity. It is just wicked and dreadful.”
Camden Council rubber-stamped its own proposals for the Maitland Park Villas site at a meeting of the planning committee in the Town Hall earlier this month.
The design had been heavily criticised, with councillors warning that corridors will be poorly lit and comparing one wing to the setting of 1980s TV prison series Cell Block H.
The meeting heard that dementia patients will be forced to stare out at a depressing brick wall just 12 metres from their windows.
Camden’s strict planning guidelines state that developments of this size should not come within 18 metres of neighbouring buildings.
At a meeting earlier this month, the council’s architects were ordered to move the building back, but officials argued that any major design changes would lead to fines as contracts had already been signed.
At the planning hearing, the application was approved despite councillors warning they had been “held to ransom”.
Ms Whiting added: “If Camden cannot meet their own guidelines, how can they keep a straight face when they reject applications from people on the same grounds?”
The Maitland Park care home, with 25 single rooms and 35 flats, will be built and run by Shaw Healthcare. Patients from Ingestre Road care homes will move there in 2012.