Impression of how the One Museum Street/Selkirk House development could look
• AT a UCL Love Your Planet event last month, council leader Georgia Gould explained how Camden had declared a climate emergency, developed a climate action plan and changed its constitution so that the climate and ecological emergency “has to be embedded in every key decision the council takes”.
Other innovations included a citizens’ assembly held in 2019 on the topic of what Camden could do to address the climate crisis; on the surface all impressive stuff.
But simultaneously I found it difficult to listen to such brazen hypocrisy, given that the council’s planning committee has been waving through large developments in the borough, often in spite of extensive opposition from residents’ groups.
It is well known that the construction industry accounts for 40 per cent of all greenhouse gases, with demolition and rebuild particularly heavy on carbon emissions.
So if Camden really mean what they say in all their fine-sounding policies, then surely the planning department should be rejecting such proposals and encouraging developers to refit rather than rebuild wherever possible.
As for working alongside local communities, for more than three years the Save Museum Street Coalition, comprised of 22 local community groups, tried unsuccessfully to engage meaningfully with Camden and the developers at every stage of a proposal to demolish and rebuild a former Travelodge hotel at No 1 Museum Street and replace it with a monstrous, bulky, 74-metre tower.
This huge structure will uncompromisingly destroy the historic scale and townscape of Bloomsbury and Covent Garden containing hundreds of listed buildings and mar views from the British Museum, Hawksmoor’s St George’s Church and Bedford Square, and many buildings and streets will be impacted by the loss of light from overshadowing.
And for what? So that some obscure multi-millionaire owner can gamble on making a massive profit?
More than 500 formal objections were submitted by residents and by all the main conservation and environmental groups.
Save Museum Street commissioned specialist environmental advice and engaged the skills of local architects to present an alternative, economically viable, scheme that would reuse the existing tower and local assets, provide more better-quality, affordable, homes and give a boost to the local economy rather than relying on a high-risk, speculative, office venture in an area where there is already a glut of unused office space.
Yet Camden’s planning committee, in their wisdom, decided to grant permission to this absurd proposal in November. In doing so they ignored the views of so many local people, conservation and environmental groups, as well as their own independent advisers.
I am sure that I’m not the only resident in Camden who is left wondering what the point is of having environmental policies which turn out to be nothing more than a smokescreen for achieving the complete opposite.
HELEN McMURRAY
Secretary, South Bloomsbury Tenants’ & Residents’ Association
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