Keith Bilton (Safety audit should be essential for New Dalby Street proposals, H&H letters July 17) draws attention to yet another example of how the proposed development at Talacre disregards the interests and safety of the users of the sports centre.

Keith Bilton (Safety audit should be essential for 'New Dalby Street' proposals, H&H letters July 17) draws attention to yet another example of how the proposed development at Talacre disregards the interests and safety of the users of the sports centre.

It is now over 30 months since it was known that the only way the sport centre could be reached after the 55 flats have been built is on a road so narrow that it has no pavements and can only work if managed by marshals.

Also, pedestrians will have to either use a 2.5 metre wide overhung passageway or risk the pavement-less road after dark.

At the public inquiry the council promised a road safety audit. Let's hope that when they write the terms of reference for the auditors, they will set out in detail who the current users of the sports centre are and all the alternative future scenarios. The sports centre and its successors are there for all time. So are the two access routes.

To those who have studied the scheme in the light of current patterns of use, the proposed access routes are dangerous but how much more so in some future scenarios? Or would the council say that the sports centre's activities will never change?

That may be the case since the owners of the flats will be in a position to object to changes that might disadvantage them. But if Camden says that, then they are admitting that the sports centre, which is a public amenity, has not been safeguarded by allowing the flats to be built.

Nick Harding

Talacre under Threat

(TUT@hpf.org.uk)