Insensitive municipal hubris

Published: 21 April, 2011

• WE should all be grateful to Theo Blackwell for his munificence in proposing to give us smart new council offices in the King’s Cross development area (Letters, April 14). 

I’m sure that the thousands of elderly people, students, mums with toddlers, school kids doing their homework and all the other library users who are at risk of losing their local libraries within walking distance will be thrilled to know that (eventually) we will have a lovely new library in King’s Cross. And the parents and children who are losing their play facilities, holiday schemes and after-school clubs all over the borough will be delighted that office workers in King’s Cross will have a gleaming new swimming pool to use during their lunch hours.

At a time when the Tory/Liberal Democrat government is imposing the most savage cuts to public services since the 1920s, to propose continuing with a high-risk property development scheme in order to acquire new centralised offices is incredibly politically insensitive and an example of pure municipal hubris. 

The chief executive may have a more reliable lift to go up and down in but the new offices will bring no extra services to Camden’s citizens, while removing council staff from the local communities they serve and replacing them with an impersonal call centre or website is likely to worsen rather than improve the council’s service to us.

If there are any capital receipts available, Cllr Blackwell and the other Labour councillors should be finding ways of using them to defend our libraries, children’s centres, and care services for the elderly and disabled, rather than building a monument to the arrogance and managerialist ideology of a handful of senior council bureaucrats and the malleability of local politicians.

SEAN THOMPSON
St Albans Road, NW5