Essential Living’s once proposed tower block design for 100 Avenue Road

• IT’S a great community win that developers Essential Living have departed, (Ten-year wait… now tower land is sold off, March 21).

However it’s a shame we didn’t know earlier about their intention to sell their three-year fallow 100 Avenue Road site with planning permission for a 24-storey tower and 5/7-storey adjacent block for 184 homes.

Because the community would have had an opportunity to commission an architect to design something more along the lines of the civic centre that Basil Spence had originally intended for that spot and, for all we know, was also stipulated in a covenant but obscured by the previous 1985 building’s planning permission which is nowhere to be found in Camden Council’s planning portal.

So let’s see how Regal London, the new, about-to-be developer / owners will manage adding the welcomed new second stairwell in line with the new fire safety regulations without compromising accommodation space.

Planning permission was predicated on a specific number of units for both private and affordable rentals. Any departure from that or any major changes to the footprint or elevation plans will require a brand new planning permission.

Here’s hoping for a very much more sympathetic building and construction management plan than was offered by Essential Living.

JANINE SACHS
Save Swiss Cottage