Dear Members
(This is written with the awareness that there are quite a large number of new residents in the area. So some of the paragraphs include explanations that will seem unnecessary to longer established members.)
Anne Hearn
Anne’s family have let us know that her funeral will be at 1pm on Thursday 7th November at Holy Trinity Church (Clarence Way, NW1 8PR) and afterwards at the Grafton on Prince of Wales Road.
Everyone who knew Anne and wants to say goodbye is welcome.
No flowers please but, if anyone wants to, please feel free to make a donation to the Pain Relief Foundation https://painrelieffoundation.org.uk/
Anne was a long term resident of Ryland Road who was especially dear to many people in the area for her gentle kindness and her courage in dealing with great physical health problems. She went missing some weeks ago and local people were active in the search for her. Sadly we have now had confirmation from her family that she has died. A link to a previous report here: Anne Hearn
IARA Annual General Meeting 2024
Advance notice that this will be held on the evening of Thursday 23 January 2025, upstairs at The Grafton. Some drinks, some food and a chance to meet neighbours (and put faces to all those people on the WhatsApp group). Oh – and some business. More on this later.
Autumn bulb planting around Kentish Town
From Transition Kentish Town: “Save the date! On Saturday 2nd November, 11am – 1pm, join Transition Kentish Town for Autumn bulb planting around Kentish Town’s ‘Web of Well-being’ Community Gardens and high street planters. All are welcome to join this fun, social and worthwhile get together. After we’ve finished planting, we’ll warm up together with a coffee and snack in a local café. If you have them, bring a trowel or bulb planting tool and gardening gloves (but if not we’ll have some spares). We have some lovely bags of bulbs but extra donations are always welcome if you have some going spare.
Meeting place and time: 11am, at the ‘Greening Your Footprint Garden’ outside Kentish Town Fire Station in Highgate Road NW5. For more information please email: info@transitionkentishtown.org.uk”
Kentish Town ‘Lighting Up’ event on Saturday November 30th
Kentish Town Road Action have organised a festive lights switch on event! Come along and enjoy live music, crafts, stories and poetry and a Christmas bazaar. There will be fun events taking place at Kentish Town Library during the day, with events continuing at the canopy in the afternoon and evening. Please see poster attached for more information on timings, or visit https://kentishtownroadaction.org/.
Police – report back from the Safer Neighbourhoods Panel (with apologies to John for not posting this sooner – particularly his report on a very effective bit of local liaison)
John in Raglan street is and has been for many years our representative on the SNP. https://www.met.police.uk/area/your-area/met/camden/kentish-town-south/about-us/crime-map
Kentish Town Safer Neighbourhood Panel Meeting 18 July 2024
Sergeant Howard of the Kentish Town SNT updated the panel on recent police activity in Kentish Town North and South:
· Patrols continue across both Kentish Town North and South. In Kentish Town South over the previous 3 months, 16 burglaries were reported. Theft from supermarkets and shops were recorded at 192 incidents. These incidents are predominantly linked to individuals involved in drug, alcohol and other substance abuse. The SNT regularly visit shops in Kentish Town Road to discuss security.
· Work is ongoing investigating a property where potentially ‘cuckooing’ has been identified in Kentish Town North.
· Bicycle, including e-bike, theft and phone and bag snatching remain issues but incidents are concentrated south of Kentish Town in Camden Town and around Euston.
· The SNT are hoping for a budget increase to allow extra patrols to deal with Anti-social behaviour including drug dealing.
The priorities for Kentish Town SNT policing remain:
· Anti-social behaviour including drugs
· Burglaries
John’s update on ASB incident in Inkerman Area
“A resident of Raglan Street has been plagued by Anti-social behaviour involving schoolchildren kicking their front door, including one incident where the door was forced open.
I introduced the resident to the SNT when they attended the Alma Street Fair. The resident was able to provide security camera footage of a number of the incidents to the SNT. The SNT used the very clear footage to work with the SNT Schools Liaison Officer and identified the schoolchildren involved. As a result, the parents of the schoolchildren, the schoolchildren themselves and the SNT visited the resident to apologise for the behaviour and also subsequently wrote to the resident to apologise.
One clear message from this is that having clear photo or video evidence of any incidents considerably increases the ability of the SNT to progress an investigation.
In this particular case it was not an expensive piece of security equipment but an inexpensive window- based cam with a simple SD card. They are readily available.
As a result of this incident, we purchased one and it allowed us to identify the owner who was responsible for allowing their dog to foul the pavement outside our house!
This is not an endorsement or recommendation but for information the one we use is: GNCC Indoor Cam Model GC2. It also requires an SD card.”
Planning matters
Raglan Street garages proposed development
Some of us went to the drop-in session on Saturday to look at the latest plans for building homes on the garage area of the Raglan Estate. Some nearby residents are concerned that too much, too high is being crammed into a small area, and that will have implications for overlooking, light and potential damage to adjoining properties. Information about the project is at https://www.camdensmallsites-raglan.co.uk/
This refers to the area of land opposite St Patrick’s school in Raglan Street where there are some old garages. Camden need to build new homes as they have a huge waiting list.
187 Kentish Town Road – the former Pizza Express and the promised cinema
Some of you may have seen the report in the Camden New Journal about the outcome of the Planning Committee, which was deciding the application from Vabel, the developer, to allow other uses for the long promised cinema space. We attended, along with Rosemary from the Kelly Street RA, Caroline from KTRA and Ian from the KT Neighbourhood Forum. David and Caroline shared the 5 minutes allowed for representations, and argued that the space must remain in use that had a community benefit even if it was not (as the Planning Officer agreed with Vabel) viable as a cinema. After some questions from members of the committee a vote was taken and there was unanimous agreement to take out the clauses that would allow conversion to office space. Vabel say that they are keen to have approaches from any organisation with a plan (and the money) to take the space for community use.
This refers to the site on the corner of Prince of Wales Road and the High Street. Previously the North London Polytechnic, which had a beautiful large domed hall which was later used by the Pizza Express. The site was then bought by developers who got permission to build an extra storey of residential on the top in exchange for creating a cinema on the ground floor. This never appeared and the subsequent developer Vabel sought to get rid of the need for a cinema. Search for Pizza Express on the IARA website and see the back history including the recent https://www.inkermanresidents.org.uk/uncategorized/the-controversial-cinema-or-not-at-the-old-pizza-express-building
Hotel conversion
In our last email we told you about this planning application for 293-299, 301-305 Kentish Town Road and 8 Holmes Road London NW5 2TJ (above Macdonalds).
We have had a closer look at the application, and particularly the traffic management plan. Search Camden Planning Applications with reference 2024/4116/P
In particular, the draft construction traffic management plan https://camdocs.camden.gov.uk/CMWebDrawer/Record/10677820/file/document?inline shows the proposed route for construction traffic (Grafton, Holmes, KT Road), and the expected size and number of vehicles. Although the site would be car free, there are concerns about increased delivery vehicles if the plans go ahead. If you have views, and/or plan to comment (deadline 26 October) we would be interested to hear from you.
Inkerman Gardens clean up
Members will probably know that at the corner of Holmes Road and Spring Place there is the Inkerman Garden which, as the notice proclaims, is a garden created by Camden Council in 2010 “in cooperation with IARA, in particular the kind assistance of Dilip Lakhani (Dip Garden Design Capel Dip. \Hort. RHS.)” and maintained by us with periodic clean ups and pruning. Some of us met on Saturday to clear rubbish (two large and very full sacks) and cut back the overgrown plants.
The Grafton.
This is a pub which for many years was a very rundown, sad place which was then taken over and transformed by a young couple who ran it very successfully for some years. So successfully that it was taken over by a national Brewery who turned it into a boring standard pub.
Thankfully it has now been taken over again by two experienced licensees, Charlie and Dickie, who have a track record of running London pubs which are respectful and involved in the local community. They’ve promised to do that here, for example allowing us to use the upstairs room for meetings, and have pioneered a “Village Supper” on Monday evenings – three courses for £12 and the chance to meet other local residents. There have now been two of these and have been popular and enjoyable. Check out their website for details.https://graftonkentishtown.co.uk/
< The first one
Secret Artist.
People may have seen – for example in the Owl Bookshop – postcards which are paintings of local landmarks. These are created by “The Secret Artist” and have been very successful.Like The Assembly House pub at the top of the High Street:https://www.secretartistnw5.com/.
She has now created a Christmas card of an image of the Prince of Wales Baths with snow and Christmas decorations. This will be sold with a donation to our local Homestart https://www.home-start.org.uk/home-start-camden
WhatsApp Protocol
The most active thing about the Inkerman Area Residents Association is the WhatsApp group. (Some people may feel it’s almost over active!) But it has been an extremely valuable local resource in terms of getting people to know each other, offer and receive assistance, recommendations for services and for people to give away or sell cheaply items of household furnishing, bicycles et cetera. It has also been an excellent place for the sharing of important news such as the sad story that opens this email.
It was getting somewhat out of control at times so we have created an agreed protocol for how the group should be used:
1. The red-hot topic of no politics. 📣 🔇 🤐
2. No abuse or offence, rudeness or name-calling.🤬
3. DM (direct message). People are leaving the group because they are fed up with excessive traffic which can be constructively reduced if people really do stick with DM. 📩 (If anyone doesn’t know how to do that, either google it or check back with us)
4. Equally agreement etc can be signalled by the reaction emojis like 👍❤️🙏🏻 🕊and it doesn’t need a separate reply or posting. Just press on the message and it should be offered in the line above and you can press the + to get more.
5. People also complain about overlong postings particularly ones which attempt to be “very clever” 🤓🦉🤖.
6. When people offer things to give away or cheaply, we rely on the fact that anyone taking them are doing so for their own use rather than selling them on through eBay etc. < 👎👿
7. When something has been taken, the agreement has been for the person who offered it will go back and put an ❌ on it to indicate it’s been taken. Just deleting it apparently leaves people somewhat confused.
8. It would be good if people signed off their postings with their first name and their street – no further details are needed.🏷️
9. Connected with this, it is generally agreed that only genuine residents who actually live here currently should be on the WhatsApp group. We have had requests from people who own homes here which they let out – and that doesn’t seem quite in line with the values of the group.
10. Going on from that, it’s a general tradition (but by no means obligatory) that newly joined people introduce themselves briefly – with their first name, street name and any other details they wish to share – such as their family 👶🍼and other animals, 🐥🐾🐱and maybe where they’ve lived before and why they’ve come etc
11. A sensitive point is that important postings can get buried within minutes or hours with something quite trivial.
Could we agree that if something serious and important comes up (like recently we had the announcement of the death of one of our members) it’s allowed to stay visible for at least a few hours?
If you’re not on the WhatsApp group and would like to join, please send us your mobile number.
D&D
Inkerman Area Residents Association Limited
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