Below is our reply to Cllr Abdi-Wali after she responded to our letter asking for the Bacton site to be opened up for public benefit. It was sent on 21 October 2026.
Dear Cllr Abdi-Wali,
Thank you for taking the time to respond to our letter in the midst of the busy campaigning period. We’d like to offer our congratulations on your new position as MP for Holborn & St Pancras and look forward to working with you in that capacity.
We were very encouraged to hear about your commitment to addressing the housing and cost of living crises in Camden by building more social and affordable homes and bringing Thames Water into public control.
It’s also great to hear that you have taken our request to open up the Bacton site for meanwhile use seriously and begun conversations with relevant colleagues. We of course understand there are significant costs associated with this; however, we believe the opportunities outweigh these.
The possibility of using the site to build temporary modular housing (also known as ‘tiny homes’) to provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness seems particularly promising to us, given your pledge to end homelessness in Camden.
This has been done successfully in Haringey and Redbridge and has proven to reduce expenditure on temporary accommodation in the long term. A new modular home prototype was exhibited outside City Hall last year.
If the Council were to repurpose the Bacton site for this until a scheme has been approved, charities like Streets Kitchen and Cooperation Town (host of the Living Room every week) are located right next to the site, so their services could easily be plugged in.
In terms of the Bacton development itself, we understand that Mount Anvil is taking a high risk, high reward approach. It seems to us that in an economic climate that is prohibitive for house building, devising a scheme that is lower rise – and thus less risky and less expensive – is the obvious solution to building the homes people desperately need.
Last year, we sketched out what an alternative scheme for Bacton might look like, with added emphasis on the carbon emissions that would be saved from a lower-rise scheme:
We are keen to work with you to make sure the public land at Bacton is used to the maximum benefit of residents.
We would like to meet with you to discuss the ideas we have suggested here and explore how we can support you to achieve your pledge on tackling homelessness.
Please let us know a suitable time for us to meet with you. We anticipate a small group of 5-8 residents on our side, some of whom will be your MP constituents.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards
Bacton Towers Action
