Grand offices are bad news

Published: 28 April, 2011

• YOU report the extremely bad news that the Camden Labour group, by a narrow margin, has decided to build a new grand office on the King’s Cross lands (Controversial Town Hall HQ wins backing, April 21), to be funded by the sale of a number of existing council buildings.  

There are so many issues it’s hard to know where to start.

There is the fact that one of the buildings to be sold for demolition is the Town Hall Annexe, barely 40 years old and located in an area that’s already seen enormous health-threatening disruption from building works; that another is the Crowndale Centre, a much-valued facility located at the centre of an area of very serious deprivation, used by many who would find the effort of getting to the proposed new office, or the old town hall, almost impossible. 

And there is the awful doubt about the financial uncertainties surrounding the plan, which threatens to swallow up funds desperately needed elsewhere. 

And the lingering question about the origins and driving force of this plan. 

It was born under a Liberal Democrat-Tory administration, opposed then by Labour; it’s now been adopted by Labour after it returned to power. 

So where’s the impetus coming from? 

Is it from our properly elected representatives or is it being driven by highly-paid senior officials who are supposed to act at the bidding of those representatives? 

MATTY MITFORD
Camden Green Party
Economics!

• COUNCILLOR Thomas Neumark hit the nail on the head (Letters, April 21). 

The vote of the Labour group in favour of the construction of new offices for Camden staff endorses a decision taken on economic grounds. 

The alternative would have meant using capital funds to invest in aging and inflexible space at the Town Hall Extension, capital funds that are sorely needed for our schools. 

A new office building – note an office building, not a “super Town Hall” – will generate savings on maintenance and energy costs which can be used instead in delivering services for Camden. 

It is true that the facility will include a swimming pool. 

It is a public swimming pool which the local community had asked for a long time ago and which can now be provided at lower cost as a result of the decision to go ahead with the new building.

To characterise this new building as a luxury is to misunderstand the basic economics which have led to this decision.

CLLR VALERIR LEACH
Labour, Highgate ward