Artist’s drawing of the Barnsbury estate scheme

• TUESDAY’S planning committee chose to green light Peabody’s Holloway prison-site development, despite members “being concerned” about the mega scheme which will have such a detrimental effect on its neighbours in Penderyn and Trecastle Ways, (Prison plan’s so damaging, March 4).

It seems the decision was made “on balance”, though the only “balance” visible to local residents is, as your correspondents point out, “the political advantage of an apparent quick-fix for the local housing crisis”.

This ridiculous state of affairs will continue as long as the response to London’s lack of affordable housing is decided on a borough-by-borough basis, with local authorities competing for City Hall funding and political brownie points.

Short of a radical change in political thinking – unlikely unless the Town Hall leadership has the guts to say “enough” – this blinkered vision is likely to determine the decision regarding Newlon Housing’s huge demolish-and-rebuild scheme for the Barnsbury estate in the south of the borough.

On the same scale as the prison site (10 acres) but with higher ground cover, the Newlon scheme means the present four-storey frontage to Caledonian Road will become eight storeys, that to the Regent Canal eleven.

Site coverage by buildings will be 40 per cent as opposed to 31 per cent at the Holloway site. An additional 600 dwellings on top of the current 300 homes will result in a 900-unit scheme, comparable to that in Upper Holloway, with a 25 per cent reduction in unbuilt-on surface area.

Newlon is “getting ready” to submit its planning application, but when it does, it’s vital that planning committee members think carefully before agreeing to this new-build and environmentally damaging proposal – existing buildings are to be demolished, and mature trees felled.

With Islington, like other inner-city areas, predicted to be more prone to flooding than outer boroughs, a strategic, capital-wide affordable housing plan is required, not 32 piecemeal slice-and-dice schemes.

London has a mayor, and a city-wide transport system. It needs a city housing policy, as Labour MP Fleur Anderson has recognised regarding the capital’s homelessness problem.

It’s time to think differently. Vying to become the borough that has built the most social housing isn’t the way to go. Elections are coming and the age of boasting is long past its sell-by date.

Islington’s housing crisis reflects that of the city. It isn’t a peculiarly local problem.

MEG HOWARTH, N7