‘Scrap the misguided plans for Barnsbury–Laycock’ 

• COUNCILLOR Diarmaid Ward complains of being forced to make £10.8million savings in the budget proposals for 2024/25, (‘Westminster is to blame for Town Hall cuts’, January 5).

The Islington budget announcement includes £10million to be spent on five new LV, liveable neighbourhoods, the largest of which, Barnsbury–Laycock, is due to have 15 new road closures with traffic camera filtering.

I have a modest proposal. Scrap the misguided plans for Barnsbury–Laycock. Those of us living in the residential core of Barnsbury consider it perfectly liveable as it is, and the effect of the road closures will be to divert traffic on to our already congested main roads, increasing pollution and emissions.

This will be unfair on the already relatively disadvantaged residents living on those roads and will penalise local businesses, outcomes directly at odds with the council’s stated aim “to deliver a more equal Islington by… creating a greener and healthier Islington and a fairer local economy”.

NICK COLLIN, N1