RAILWAY CLUB, COLLEGE LANE, NW5 IBJ

I strongly object to what is suggested in the CMS, believing that much of the information contained in it is misleading or not correct and that what is proposed — that Little Green Street should be the access for construction traffic — would be a gross interference with my human rights to respect for my family life and home and peaceful enjoyment of the latter. I ask you to reject the application.

I should first say that I do not understand why any application or CMS is being considered. You know that the permission granted by the Planning Inspector was based on a mistake as to the width of Little Green Street and/or cannot be put into effect. The permission granted was said to take into account or to comply with Design Bulletin 32 — Residential Roads and Footpaths (DB32) which states that a road or carriageway that is less than 2.75 metres wide may serve as a private driveway (not as the access to a car-park for over 20 cars, least of all to a construction site). The information provided by Camden Council was that the street was 3 to 3.6 metres wide and an extrapolation from Ordnance Survey maps suggests that it is 3 metres wide and has pavements 1.6 metres wide. It is, in fact, 2.5 metres wide and has little or no pavements on either side. The Council should have used its power to revoke or modify planning permission under Section 97 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 long ago.

I refer to assertions made and information given in the CMS

1. Section.1 .1 of the CMS states that Little Green Street will be the access to the site and that there are “no alternative routes available for access” because Camden Council has refused access through the lngestre Estate on health and safety grounds. I do not think that the development in its present form should ever be permitted but the idea that access through Little Green Street, through which most people from the lngestre Estate, those living on College Lane and the street itself and others pass, is healthier or safer than through the estate is absurd. The roads on the estate are the usual width of a road, unlike Little Green Street, and have pavements, etc.

2. It is said in the CMS, S.4, that “it is essential that road surface improvement works be undertaken in the near future to improve the quality of the surface and its appearance”. Essential to whom? I and anyone that I know who uses Little Green Street are quite happy with the road as it is.

3. The fact that the proposed developers have found a lorry that weighs only
6.5 tons and could apparently travel up and down Little Green Street without mishap does not mean that the new CMS is in any way acceptable. 5,400 trips of the vehicle, (S.6.1), an extraordinary number of movements by a vehicle that will prevent any other movement on the street, or more than half of proposed trips, have largely to do with excavation for an underground car-park. Why is a supposedly environmentally conscious Council considering allowing this sort of disruption for people who live on and use the street for a car-park? Any development should surely be car-free?

4. S.9 of the CMS makes it clear that far larger and heavier vehicles will actually be used. As someone who watched the small vehicle used by the proposed developers when making exploratory holes in Little Green Street almost crash into a wall of No. 124 Highgate Road and have to manoeuvre back and forth into Highgate Road, I wonder what is going to happen when such a vehicle comes down the street.

5. In S. 14 to S.16 of the CMS it accepts that the development will involve a “trip” of a lorry through Little Green Street every 15 minutes, every weekday for at least three years, more likely three years and seven months. Each trip will, in fact, be two passages of any vehicle, i.e. a vehicle every 7and I2 minutes, if the figures given in the CMS are correct. This cannot be acceptable. I refer later in this letter to the breach of the human rights of residents of Little Green Street that this means.

6. S. 20.2 of the CMS asserts that “the properties of LGS are unlikely to suffer any damage due to construction traffic”. This is an astonishing assertion given that the houses have, to date, weathered on the road two feet or less from their walls only the smallest of rubbish collection or delivery lorries three times a week, not anything like what is implied by construction of the development through Little Green Street. The information provided as to access to Little Green Street from Highgate Road, where larger vehicles are to be waiting, is not correct; it makes no mention of the effect on the road of water filled barriers and their effect on the bus lane and police and ambulance services which use Highgate Road every day. I understand that, extraordinarily, none of the police, the ambulance or fire service or Transport for London has been told that the proposed development involves the obstruction of Highgate Road for a minimum of three years. Planning decisions have to take into account the human rights of those affected by them, specifically, Article 8, the right to respect for private and family life, one’s home and correspondence, and Article 1 Protocol 1, the right to peaceful enjoyment of one’s property or possessions. A public authority may not interfere with the exercise of these rights except for reasons of national security etc. and any interference must strike a “fair balance” between the public interest and individuals’ rights. No thought at all has been given to the human rights of the residents of Little Green Street by those preparing the CMS except that in S.22 it is said that “upon completion of construction work” any damage to the houses on the street will be made good and there will be insurance to cover this. Our rights will clearly be breached.

If the CMS were approved, the residents of Little Green Street would, effectively be imprisoned in their homes for three or four years. The street and its paving are so narrow that it can be difficult to leave one’s house if a lorry is in the road, least of all to go up or down it. No one with a child or with any disability would be able safely to go out. The noise would be intolerable; the structure of the street means that noise reverberates. The dust and dirt would be ghastly. Any passing lorry blocks out the light of downstairs rooms. The Grade 11 listed buildings are likely to be damaged, either by a lorry driving into one or as a result of constant vibration; construction experts consulted by people living on the street believe they will be. If my house, which has original 1760’s beading and woodwork, is damaged it will not be easy to repair and what are residents to do if their houses are damaged and the proposed developers expect to carry out remedial work only once construction is completed? My husband and I may want to move in the next few years. Apart from the impossibility of selling our house if a construction vehicle is to be passing every few minutes and the effect on its price, any removal van would have to battle with the builders’ lorries.

The interference with residents’ rights to respect for and peaceful enjoyment of their homes will be excessive and is not balanced by any public interest associated with the development of the Railway Club site as presently proposed. The payment of compensation would not make the disruption implied by approval of the CMS acceptable but those who will most suffer the effects of it have not even been offered compensation to make the interference with their rights more proportionate as the law and the Council’s duty of care require.

I ask you to reject the CMS dated 1” August 2007 and finally to recognise that the permission granted by the Planning Inspector cannot be implemented.