In preparation for our upcoming meeting (Thursday 20 February), Bacton Towers Action sent a letter to Camden Council, inviting them to attend:
Camden Council initially agreed to attend the meeting, but have since reversed this position:
Thank you for your letter regarding the redevelopment of Bacton Phase 2 and for inviting a Cabinet member and senior council officer to attend the public meeting on 20th February 2025.
Unfortunately council representatives and members are unable to attend the meeting on 20th February.
I understand that Mount Anvil have invited you to a separate meeting at the Gospel Oak regeneration hub.
The Council would like to assure you that Camden remains committed to meaningful engagement with residents and ensuring that there are further opportunities for discussion through the design consultation process. The consultation process has included four design consultation events, weekly drop-in sessions, and two ‘Meet the Developer’ events. There will be additional consultation events before the final planning application is submitted by summer 2025, ensuring ongoing dialogue between Mount Anvil, the Council, and the local community.
The current proposals are still being developed and consulted on, meaning there is still scope and time for plans to evolve in response to resident feedback. The development aims to provide around 100 council-owned social rent homes and ten intermediate affordable homes. These numbers would almost double the amount of affordable housing on the site compared to the original plans from over 10 years ago. The scheme will deliver high-quality, energy-efficient housing for local residents. As part of the ongoing consultation, Mount Anvil have consulted on proposals with building heights ranging from 4 to 23 storeys.
Mount Anvil continue to meet regularly with several independent design groups whose role is to scrutinise and help shape the proposals as the scheme progresses. These include London Borough of Camden’s Design Review Panel, Mount Anvil’s Independent Design Review Panel, and Historic England. Additionally, Mount Anvil are in frequent discussions with the local planning authority to ensure that the emerging designs align with Camden’s planning policies.
The Council sees the Bacton Phase 2 development as a key driver for delivering objectives in local and national planning policy, especially in terms of addressing the ongoing housing crisis in our borough, in a very challenging economic climate. In September 2022, the Council obtained approval from Cabinet to change the delivery strategy for the Bacton redevelopment to a partnership approach. Following a competitive procurement process, the Council selected Mount Anvil as its partner, working together to bring forward the project. This approach will enable the Council to continue building the new homes that the local community need, both now and in the future, in a way that is financially viable. At a time when economic challenges mean many local authorities are struggling to build affordable housing, Camden is getting on with finding solutions to tackling the housing crisis.
Whilst the existing planning permission for the site includes 71 affordable homes (61 for social rent and 10 for intermediate), Mount Anvil and Camden Council are looking to bring forward new proposals for Bacton Phase 2 which increase the number of affordable homes in a deliverable design that meets the latest design and building standards. The previous design is no longer compliant with current building, fire safety and sustainability standards, and so it is no longer possible for the Council to implement the existing planning permission.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and concerns with the Council. We appreciate and value your engagement with the Council.
Email from Zoe Dunn, Team Leader Regeneration, Development, Supporting Communities, London Borough of Camden, 07.02.25
Bacton Towers Action notes that there are many things that we would like to discuss with London Borough of Camden, when we are able to do so. Amongst which, the text in the letter that we have highlighted in bold does not appear to be true.
Neil Vokes, Director of Development, said at a meeting of the Resources and Corporate Performance Scrutiny Committee, Monday 22nd February 2021, 7.30pm:
“We wanted to go back and relook at the planning applications we had in place for a number of reasons. We’ve been updating a lot of our schemes to make sure they comply with the latest regulations—so fire safety is the obvious one. So, we’ve done that on Bacton Low Rise and we’ve also recently done that on Maitland Park as well. So, where we’ve had those historical schemes that had planning in place maybe 3, 4, 5 years ago, we’ve gone back and updated them. But, we’ve also learnt a lot of lessons from some of the earlier schemes around design efficiency around the types of housing we want.
So, we’ve actually gone back quite considerably on Bacton 2 to look at all elements of the scheme and to look at how we can make those improvements. And part of that is also financial—it’s looking at the business case and seeing that actually if we had built out the original planning application for Bacton 2, it wouldn’t have worked very efficiently on viability terms either so we’ve gone back to make it perform a lot better. And I guess the final element of it is updating all the sustainability standards. So, we originally had a Community heating system that would bring together Bacton 2 and Cherry Court and that is now changing and we’re coming up with a far more green and sustainable energy strategy for the scheme.
We’re also always on the look out for increasing the amount of social housing we can get on these schemes. So, B2 has a mix that is weighted towards private sale because it is to generate a surplus that cross subsidises the earlier council housing that we built in Cherry Court..But there have been some opportunities come up to lobby for more grant funding as well and so part of the delay has been to see whether we can secure more affordable funding that then means we can increase the percentage of affordable housing in that particular scheme.”
Bacton Towers Action 