Campaigners in withering attack on Mount Pleasant Plans

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Campaigners in withering attack on Royal Mail’s Mount Pleasant flats plan

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A WITHERING critique of the newly-privatised Royal Mail’s plans for the Mount Pleasant site has been posted online by opponents of the scheme. In the 20-minute video, campaigners call on Islington and Camden councils to reject the plans, which are going through the planning system.

The 6.5-acre site, consisting of a car park and sorting offices, straddles the Islington and Camden border in Farringdon. Its development will prove highly lucrative as it is near the heart of London and the European transport link at St Pancras.

Campaigners are not only angry that millions of pounds of income have been lost to the taxpayer since the privatisation of the Royal Mail, but that most of the homes will be for private tenants.

There are no plans to improve the infrastructure by building schools and doctors’ or dentists’ surgeries, thus impinging on already-stretched public services.

The video, posted by Mount Pleasant Forum, criticises the development’s lack of affordable housing, ill-thought-out layout and architectural incongruity, and complains about misleading images of the designs.

The “unfair deal” for the community would place a greater burden on existing resources, it says. Christopher Hatten Primary School had 63 students on its waiting list this year, the video points out.

The site would feature 80 per cent private housing, missing the 50 per cent target set for new developments.

A pedestrian route called “the garden” would be “a gloomy wind tunnel, a pedestrian precinct that leads from nowhere to nowhere”, it says.

The video continues: “This misnomer will be beaten only in its absurdity by the adjacent meadow, a service ramp that will spill 3000 [Royal Mail] vehicles a day into already-congested Farringdon Road.”

It adds: “Crossing the road at this point will be suicide” before going on to say that tower blocks would turn the area into a canyon.

Objectors are calling on Islington and Camden planners to throw out the scheme.

A spokeswoman for Royal Mail declined to comment, but referred the Tribune to its original press release, which said: “The development will create new public spaces in and around the site and will contribute to improvements to public services in the immediate area, such as schools and health services.

“It will help create 1,250 new jobs in the wider economy and will complement the new Crossrail station at Farringdon, due to open in 2017-18.”