From a letter to Islington, Camden & Haringey councils on the Dartmouth Park Healthy Neighbourhood plan

• I WAS born in Makepeace Avenue in 1970, my father was born there in 1943, my grandmother in Camden Road in 1908.

I have lived in Highgate, Kentish Town, Caledonian Road, Gospel Oak, Belsize Park and Dartmouth Park all my life.

My son goes to nursery in Gospel Oak, my daughter to King Alfred, my office is in Cliff Road.

I write all this to be very clear that I know the area inside out, I cycle to work but sometimes take the children to school by bus, walk or car (same I have owned since 2004).

While I hope that the intentions behind this plan are well meaning, these proposals are ill thought out. It would appear improving a couple of streets in DP trumps every other interest. Should DP be especially healthy and everywhere else suffer? And by that, it will be mainly children.

The proposals will mean gridlock on Gordon House Road, Brecknock Road, Highgate Road, West Hill, Hampstead Way and Highgate Hill.

This is where the majority of all schools are in the DP area, well the area you have determined is Dartmouth Park but goes way beyond that remit.

Puss in Boots nursery; Gospel Oak Primary; Eleanor Palmer Primary; Parliament Hill School; Acland Burghley School; William Ellis School; St Joseph’s Primary; N Family; Channing Junior and Senior; Highgate School Junior and Senior; St Michael’s.

People live in Highgate, Kentish Town, Hampstead, etc, and send their kids to schools within all the surrounding areas. How will they get there?

And please don’t say cycle, Highgate and Hampstead are so steep it is the choice of amateur professionals to train, not parents with small children or the elderly. Buses won’t move.

And when the above roads aren’t in gridlock pumping out fumes, making journeys untenable – at other times with no action taken although requested by many on Commonplace – there will be speeding because you have chosen to ignore the requests to monitor this, again, creating pollution and ignoring safety. But very happily placing cameras throughout DP?

You are removing parking for Waterlow Park but creating a bus lane to create more gridlock as it approaches the village. This is an area that should be looked after, it is a jewel of the city by anyone’s assessment.

You are suggesting that people should leave Holloway Road and go through Highgate Hill and Cholmeley Park to Archway Road. Is that a serious suggestion?

How do people living in Tufnell Park, Holloway, Kentish Town, Crouch End, etc, access Hampstead Heath without it taking a very long time when it is on their doorstep and a reason people choose to live there?

It goes on. The engagement meeting in July was a disingenuous way to engage residents… 30 minutes! Why, if this is such a good plan, would you not engage in the autumn rather than conveniently choose the summer holidays, when families are away?

Traffic disbursement is not a clean air solution.

And finally where is Haringey? How can a proposal like this take place affecting a borough so greatly without them being party to it.

If a healthy neighbourhood is the aim, it should be every neighbourhood.

Why not have roads open at certain times, 20mph across the area and enforced? Why not something involving sophisticated thinking?

This proposal should be wholly rejected and reconsidered.

LAYO PASKIN
Address supplied