950 new homes would be built on Barnsbury Estate if the Newlon scheme gets the go-ahead

• COMMENTS of mine are quoted in your report about the rebuilding of the Barnsbury Estate, for which Mount Anvil and the Newlon Housing Association have now submitted a planning application, (Estate vision unveiled for 10-year transformation, June 17).

But the figures you give are not right in an important respect. The “old” pre-war part of the estate is to be refurbished, so the number of housing units there will remain the same.

It is the “new” post-war part that is to be demolished and rebuilt with nearly three times as many units – 950 according to the planning application not 675 as you report – in place
of the existing 371. So there will be 579 additional units, all in the “new” part of the estate.

The new buildings, as well as often being double the height of the existing, will also overall be double the size in their footprint which, combined with the 260 per cent increase in the number of units, means that the amount of unbuilt-on surface, both hard and green, will decrease to a mere 20 per cent of what it is now, per housing unit.

It is going to feel very much more heavily built-up; scarcely the “landscape-led” approach that the applicants claim in their promotional literature. In terms of “persons per acre” the rebuilt “new” estate will be 50 per cent denser than the Barbican.

JAMES DUNNETT
James Dunnett Architects
Barnsbury Road, N1