LETTERS

The situation on Camden streets is bad and getting worse

18 October, 2018

‘Many residents and businesses welcome the planned closure of the Camden High Street market’

• A LONG hot summer in Camden Town has seen little improvement in relentless, in-your-face, drug dealing, aggressive begging, rough sleeping, obstructive pavement clutter and windblown drifts of litter – according to residents and businesses who contribute to the monthly Camden Community Safety Partnership meeting, which I attend on behalf of the Camden Safer Neighbourhood Board.

Meanwhile in the face of council and police cuts, businesses are paying hundreds of thousands of pounds per year for private security wardens (who inevitably lack the wide legal powers of the police) in an effort to keep dealers and beggars at bay.

One positive development: many residents and businesses welcome the planned closure of the Camden High Street market on Buck Street, which, it is claimed, has consistently provided cover for street drug dealers.

A visit last Saturday afternoon highlighted the issues – Camden High Street on a warm afternoon reeling under the crush of visitors, parading four or five abreast, with pavement obstruction by traders extending their displays over two metres beyond the permitted limit, and reducing the surging crowds to single file between Hawley Crescent and the canal bridge.

I watched pedestrians stepping into the road in order to bypass the congestion caused. No police or council presence was visible. By 7pm the shops are shut and Camden Town, along with the rest of the borough, is given over to Camden’s much-vaunted night-time economy.

Despite heavy council investment in uri-lifts, the spectacle of public urination in the late evening / early hours remains an unsavoury concern for residents, along with epic quantities of litter.

At the same time, Transport for London staff at Camden Town tube struggle to cope with late-night anti-social behaviour outside and inside the station. Elsewhere, in Seven Dials and Covent Garden, residents report rough sleeping and heroin addiction dominating the night hours.

The two hard-working police teams tasked to police the night-time economy, and paid for by the late-night levy imposed on pubs and clubs, have to cover the whole borough, all 24 square miles of it, three nights a week between 9pm and 4am. It’s not enough.

These are uncomfortable truths which must be faced. With winter on the way, the hope is that improvements will be made over coming months, and will be duly praised – but right now, Camden Council and central north police have to understand the situation is bad, and getting worse.

CHRIS FAGG

Vice-Chair

Camden Safer Neighbourhood Board

LETTERS

Help in the fight against cybercrime

11 October, 2018

• THE number of cybercrimes that happened in Camden last year was staggering:

• 1,642 reports of fraud and cybercrime;

• from which a total of £15,013,442 was lost;

• average amount lost per report was £9,143.

On Saturday Camden Neighbourhood Watch held an event at the Friends House in Euston with guest speakers from the Met including an expert from Falcon (Fraud & Linked Crime Online, Organised Crime Command). Advice was given on the steps you can take to avoid becoming a victim of fraud and cybercrime.

Going forward, Camden Neighbourhood Watch will be circulating monthly emails that will include details on the current cybercrimes occurring in the borough and crime prevention advice to combat them.

If you would like to be included in this email Camden.NHW@Met.Police.uk with your name and postal address (so you can be put on the correct distribution list). Please encourage your friends and neighbours to sign up.

If every person told three people about this project we could really scale things up to increase universal knowledge about the scam methods used and, in turn, bring down the number of victims of these awful crimes.

The monthly emails will include details of future talks where everyone is most welcome.

ALISON McWHINNIE

Chair, Camden Neighbourhood Watch Association

LETTERS

Community feedback is vital in fighting drug dealing and anti-social behaviour

04 October, 2018

• AT a joint meeting with Haverstock and Gospel Oak wards at the Queen’s Crescent Community Association (QCCA), Safer Neighbourhoods police and Camden community safety officers made it clear just how vital community information and feedback can be in reducing inner-city problems such as anti-social behaviour and drug dealing.

Despite the known cuts to police resources, the point was made that it has never been easier to find out online about policing in one’s area, to meet police at regular face-to-face contact sessions or to contact the Camden Community Safety partnership.

All residents have to do to find out about local police is to follow the link www.met.police.uk/a/your-area/ and put in their postcode. For many other local concerns it makes sense to email Camden Community Safety direct at communitysafety@camden.gov.uk.

The same joint meeting saw a copy of Sir Keir Starmer’s hugely impressive Youth Safety Taskforce report, to which Gospel Oak’s Foyezeur Miah, chief executive of QCCA, is a key contributor, reflecting Gospel Oak’s long record of support to young people.

CHRIS FAGG

Chair Gospel Oak Safer Neighbourhood Panel

Vice-Chair Camden Safer Neighbourhood Board

Sunday, July 29th 2018

CAMDEN NEW JOURNAL

Plea for festival-style toilets to deal with Camden Town urine rivers

Developers urged to pay for new facilities

27 July, 2018 — By William McLennan

PROPERTY developers in control of swathes of Camden Town should pay for festival-style toilets to be deployed every weekend to end the scourge of public urination.

This is the call from residents’ groups who say they are fed-up of drunken revellers relieving themselves in side streets around NW1.

Chris Fagg, vice-chairman of the police liaison group Camden Safer Neighbourhood Board, said: “We have the extraordinary situation of billionaire property developers and music promoters making millions out of the area while the streets are allowed to become a public toilet in the early hours of the morning.”

Billionaire investor Teddy Sagi’s firm Lab Tech has been buying large chunks of Camden Town since 2014, bringing different market areas under single ownership for the first time.

Mr Fagg said: “Isn’t it time Camden shamed Camden Town property developers into paying up for a number of trailer-mounted loo suites of the sort seen at open-air events to be sited around the area at weekends? With users paying a charge via contactless cards these could even be self-financing.”

Pat Thomas, chairwoman of the Harmood Clarence Hartland Residents Association – a collection of streets off Chalk Farm Road – said she backed the proposals. Members of the association routinely oppose new applications for late-night venues, with examples of their objections including streets being “adorned with vomit” and “our children [having to] walk past men urinating next to their homes in the early evening”.

Four “urilift” urinals, which rise from the pavement in the evening, have been installed. The pop-up urinal in Inverness Street was said by the council to be the second-most used in Europe, with 500 visits per week detected by a sensor. But Mr Fagg said they were “ludicrously inadequate for the footfall in Camden Town”, which regularly tops 150,000 on each day of the weekend.

Mark Neal, chairman of the Camden Town with Primrose Hill Safer Neighbourhood Panel, said public urination was the “stinky byproduct of a much wider issue” which saw volunteer residents come up against well-paid licensing lawyers as they attempt to limit the number of late-night venues in the area.

Community safety chief, Councillor Nadia Shah, said the council’s levy on late-opening venues would help pay for new facilities. “We provide a number of temporary urinals in known hotspots in Camden on busy nights – as well as our permanent pop-up urinals in key locations,” she said.

A spokesman for Camden Market said: “We liaise with residents regularly and understand their concerns. We currently have four blocks of toilets across Camden Market, one of which was opened last summer in the North Yard of Stables Market, and we ensure that those toilets nearest to night-time venues are open for use until late night.”

LETTERS

Give the people of Camden a break – give us more loos

26 July, 2018

• EVERY weekend, day and night, up to 150,000 visitors throng Camden Town, patronising the dozens of bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants in the 1.5miles between Chalk Farm tube and Mornington Crescent.

Much alcohol is consumed, and the results have to go somewhere. Queues build up at pub and bar loos and towards the end of the evening those in need inevitably seek relief elsewhere, often in the residental streets running off Camden High Street.

After years of complaints by residents about public urination (and worse), Camden Council has installed, at great expense, three urilifts, which rise majestically from the nether regions during evening hours. In response to further complaints a plastic receptacle (usually blocked with rubbish) was attached to the wall by Morrisons’s petrol station.

Despite this investment four facilities are plainly ludicrously inadequate for the footfall in Camden Town (the public toilets at Camden Town tube are, of course, shut overnight).

We have the extraordinary situation of billionaire property developers and music promoters making millions out of the area while the streets are allowed to become a public toilet in the early hours.

Licensees already pay a late-night levy which allows (just) for policing the borough’s night-time economy.

Isn’t it time Camden shamed Camden Town property developers into paying up for a number of trailer-mounted loo suites, of the sort seen at open-air events, to be sited around the area at weekends? With users paying a charge via contactless cards these could even be self-financing.

For five years Camden Safer Neighbourhood Board has supported pressure from residents/council tax payers, who quite reasonably never expected their area to become a 24/7 free-fire zone, or turn into Europe’s most famous drugs market.

More recently, the Camden Town night-time economy has shown certain encouraging signs of becoming a better neighbour. It’s only right that civilised toilet facilities should be part of this.

CHRIS FAGG

Vice-Chair Camden Safer Neighbourhood Board