• IN 2016 residents of Haverstock and Gospel Oak were promised, in a glossy report, a strategic plan for the area after nearly 1,000 residents took part in transparent and well-publicised consultation.

None was produced and the findings ignored.

Instead, four years later, Camden Council decided to develop a community “vision” for the area with the help of 30 hand-picked citizens (supposedly the “voices of the community”) and pays them well to attend citizens’ assembly meetings.

The meetings (four so far) are held in secret based on (as yet) unpublished detailed papers, well over 200 pages in long so far.

The rest of us are supposed to contribute through a website where the three sections inviting comment on the process and the future have never worked, despite this malfunction being reported in August.

We are even invited to “Check back in September” for full details of how we can participate through webinars, interactive workshops etc. No information whatsoever has appeared to date.

Vague promises have been made of some meetings with organisations and businesses in the area many of which are vital to the running of local services.

Is this whole exercise just another expensive junket for currently five more sets of consultants as a cover to allow the council to get on with producing a plan unencumbered by the people who live here?

Yet another example of the creeping anti-democratic behaviour of Camden Council.

Or will Cllr Danny Beales and the six local councillors (who attend the meetings as observers) get the website working, produce details of how the whole community is to be involved, and meet the organisations which provide vital services and bring much needed funding into the area?

MICK FARRANT,
NW5