CNJ COMMENT - Those with grand ideas forget the people at their peril

Published: 18 November, 2010

THOSE who live on council estates have long learned that it is best to beware planners, architects and councillors seized with new ideas!

Any new proposal, even on the smallest scale, should be treated gingerly.

But whatever the history of a project or its potential efficacy, the first step is consultation, consultation and consultation.

It is only when there is a consensus of opinion that the next step of preliminary design should be taken. After that, another round of consultation.

All this is a messy business but to ignore it is to invite a bitter, divided public – and politicians should take note of this because it can lead to death at the polls.

Somewhere along the line, it seems as if the council has not learned this lesson considering the apparent scale of anger on the Gospel Oak estate (see pages 5 and 16).

Assuming the newly formed Gospel Oak Neighbourhood Action Group (GONAG) is representative of the majority of the estate’s tenants – and there is every indication that it is – the need for caution by the council, along with the start-up of the consultative procedure, does not appear to have been given much thought.

This is a recipe for disaster.

Gospel Oak is one of the borough’s two largest estates – the other, Regent’s Park estate, was built in the 1950s.

Gospel Oak, primarily a 1970s estate, is home to about 5,000 people.

No doubt 40 years ago architects and councillors lauded it to the skies. To a large extent it would have been because it replaced some rather slummy housing.

Today, the professionals condemn it as a failure.To some extent, this is all part of the yo-yo nature of fashion.

GONAG’s call for an “area forum” on the proposal has some merit.

Commerce and needs of community

ANOTHER residents’ group, is rightly keeping a watchful eye over developments at Hawley Wharf Four acres of land rest in prime location in the heart of Camden Town. 

So far, after 15 months of consultation, nothing is clear.

Fears of over-develop­ment, the burden on the transport system, a shortage of social housing have been waved away or seemingly obscured in a cloud of PR puff.

What of Camden’s proud industrial and architectural heritage?

There has to be a marriage between the commercial needs of developers and the social need of the people that live there.