First Neighbourhood Planning Event

From 3 to 5 July we held 2 public sessions and 1 stakeholder workshop at St Luke’s in Oseney Crescent.  A big thank you to the Rev. Jon March and his congregation for kindly allowing to use the Church over those days.  St Luke’s is a Kentish Town landmark building, built nearly 150 years ago at a time when Kentish Town was developing rapidly from a green suburb noted for its clean air into a more grimy and gritty suburb as a result of the development of the railways.  Along with the other buildings from the period including our streets and crescents, public houses, piano factories and shops it shows the vigour, energy and confidence of our Victorian forebears.  The vision of Kentish Towners from that period was a sort of neighbourhood planning that we wanted to acknowledge and develop to be relevant to those of us who now live, work, shop, worship or play in Kentish Town.
The first public session on 3 July was attended by over 80 people.  Around the Church we had displayed the results of the week long engagement we had undertaken around Kentish Town Road.  This included the wish cards and the post it notes with ideas from people as to what would most improve Kentish Town, what they would do if they were Mayor of Kentish Town, what they would like to see in Kentish Town.  During the evening this was added to and people were asked to identify the places they most liked and least liked in Kentish Town on a large map and the 3 things/areas most in need of improvement in Kentish Town.
On 4 July we held a stakeholder day attended by around 50 people including Camden Council Officers, local Councillors, owners of businesses in Kentish Town, landowners, Transition Kentish Town, the Somali Youth Development Resource Centre, the Safer Neighbourhoods Police Team and representatives from London Underground and Transport for London.  In groups we looked at identifying key issues and priorities in areas such as transport, community services/facilities, green/public spaces, planning, housing and historic buildings and economic development.

During the day of 5 July technical experts from the Prince’s Foundation worked to summarise all the work undertaken and put it together into a presentation highlighting some possible proposals to take forward.  The second public session on the evening of 5 July, attended by over 60 people, focused on presenting the outputs of all the engagement based on the priority areas identified by everyone who had attended the events.
The Prince’s Foundation are now collating all the information and feedback and will produce a report for us.  Once this report is finalised we will circulate it to everyone for further comments.  We will also continue with consultations with those groups we have not yet been able to contact. In the light of all those comments we will then consider those aspects of the report that could go forward into a draft Neighbourhood Plan for Kentish Town. Our aim is to develop the Neighbourhood Plan with you over the course of the next 6-9 months.