Protesters at the ‘little forest’ near Highbury Corner 

• DEMONSTRATORS and COVID-19 give Islington Council an 11th-hour chance to correct a flawed and environ­mentally degrading planning decision.

I’m talking about the six-story private block to be constructed on the edge of Highbury Corner beside Dixon Clark Court, requiring the felling of seven mature trees.

The pressing need for more affordable social housing is beyond question, but the environment is also claimed by our council to be vital and non-negotiable and was supposed to be the impetus for the reconstruction of the roundabout.

Yet if councillors were to look across the roundabout from the station side, what they would now see through the trees of the “arboretum” would be the little wood to the right of Dixon Clark Court.

So, despite the corner reconstruction, despite having removed 17 trees and reduced the original green space on the roundabout by about a third, there is at least some overspill of nature.

While losing seven trees might have seemed an acceptable price in 2018 before the roundabout reconstruct­ion, now it has become a travesty of environ­mentally focused planning.

The green space and tree cover of the roundabout will have no continuity or extension into the surrounds. What we will be left with will be a sad and shrunken island of green circled by concrete and cars – and the new six-story private block.

Please, councillors, think again!

ANDREW HAWKINS
Address supplied