The Vision for Camley Street: A New Food Quarter in King’s Cross

1. The Vision for Camley Street: A New Food Quarter in King’s Cross St. Pancras

2. Introduction In August 2018, Camden Council published a discussion document entitled Camley Street Area Vision – A new quarter in St. Pancras. The document includes some information as to the Council’s specific plans for the Camley Street industrial estate, and makes mention of the work already undertaken by the Camley Street Neighbourhood Forum in envisaging a better future for the businesses on the industrial estate and for the residents of the Elm Village estate across the road. This document is a supportive response to Camden’s document, focusing more tightly on the potential of the area. This document will describe our vision, based on Camden’s adopted Plan which identifies four key priorities: 1) Create a more vibrant and attractive area, 2) Enhance the connectivity to the surrounding area, 3) Create more green spaces 4) Use the land more efficiently …and maintain the high levels of employment currently in the area, while simultaneously meeting one of Camden’s and London’s top priorities… to build more genuinely affordable housing. The boundaries of the Camley Street Neighbourhood Area

3. A New Food Quarter… The Camley Street industrial estate currently accommodates numerous businesses, employing about 500 people. The businesses include a laundry, an architectural model-making firm, a clothes designer and various vehicle-repair workshops. However, the majority of the employment there is provided by businesses in the food sector: a wholesale butcher, a wholesale fishmonger, a wholesale supplier of muesli and other cereal products, and a branch of Booker. These businesses service the needs of many clients in the immediate area and further afield: shops, hotels, restaurants, schools, hospitals. It is true that a part of the King’s Cross/St. Pancras area has recently been termed ‘the knowledge quarter’, given the arrival there of firms working in the digital industries, and the proximity of University College London and the British Library. A part of the area could also justly be termed ‘the medical/science quarter’, given the presence of the Francis Crick Institute, the proximity of University College London Hospital, the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Veterinary College, and the likely redevelopment of the St. Pancras Hospital site. We would like to add another –‘the food quarter’ given the critical importance of the businesses in Camley Street in supplying food to a host of outlets in Camden and central London. Businesses in Camley Street

4. ..already producing food One of the things that brings the community together is the emphasis on growing food in the area. We have orchards and food production on waste land around the site plus allotments and green spaces. Our vision is also to expand and incorporate the latest thinking in the cultivation of food in city environments with the redevelopment of the area, incorporating this thinking into the design of green buildings.  Camden’s Local Plan states that the borough ‘has one of the most successful economies in the country: home to 24,000 businesses and over 300,000 jobs. The success of its economy relies on the wide variety of employment sectors including professional and business services, the “knowledge economy”, for example higher education and research, and creative industries such as design, fashion and publishing. Camden also has a large number of jobs in the health sector, hotels and restaurants, legal services, and transport and distribution.’ (Camden Local Plan 2017, para. 5.1, page 164)   Of the figure of 24,000 businesses quoted in the Local Plan, over 2,900 are in the food services sector. The average number of employees per business in this sector is 17. So nearly 50,000 people are employed in the sector in Camden. London more widely is the largest and most popular dining destination in Europe. It is a very competitive place for food service providers. Allotments and part of the orchard on waste ground outside Bookers

5. Food and high-tech The concentration of knowledge industries, educational, scientific and health institutions and food outlets provides a major opportunity for the development of the ‘food quarter’ which we envisage, serving all those working in those places, and contributing to the development of their work. In particular, there are connections between food and high-tech modes of communication, and between food and health. Currently, there is a significant move towards integrating high-tech and food, in Camden and elsewhere; Deliveroo and Just Eat are examples. In early 2018, The Grocer magazine reported that food and drink businesses had in the previous year secured £23 million from crowd-funding sources like Crowdcube: almost 20% of all crowd-funding initiatives in that period (The Grocer, 27 January 2018). This kind of integration of high-tech and food is one of the opportunities that we envisage for the Camley Street development. An example would be to set up a refectory to which everybody in the area could use – businesses and local residents, not forgetting the imminent presence of big companies like Google, Facebook and Nike not far away. There could be a face-recognition payment system, whereby the bill for food and drink would automatically be deducted from bank accounts, The system could be extended to retail outlets used by residents and employees of businesses in the area.

6. Food and health Pictures of food production in cities…good pictures from the Sustainable Food Trust website Hippocrates, the father of medicine, famously wrote: ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.’ The close relation between the quality of food and human health is beyond dispute. Put negatively, many of the developed world’s most troubling conditions and diseases – obesity, diabetes, heart disease, various cancers – are definitively linked to eating the wrong kinds of food too much and too often.   With major health institutions on the doorstep, all of which communicate clear messages to the local community about healthier eating, it seems obvious that an expanded group of businesses supplying healthier food could be a significant contributor to the effective realisation of these messages. There is now good evidence supported by the NHS that diabetes (especially type 2) is closely linked to eating the wrong food too often; and that healthy and delicious food, such as that which would be available from the refectory mentioned earlier, can be a major factor in reducing or even curing the disease. We can learn from the Sustainable Food Trust which confirms that urban agriculture is sprouting up all over the world. ‘Urbanites are taking the soil into their own hands and wrestling back control of food production – from community allotments driving regeneration in Detroit and guerrilla gardeners turning flower beds into cabbage patches across cities, to temporary growing plots in spaces like the Skip Garden just around the corner in Kings Cross and commercial rooftop greenhouse operations like Lufa Farm in Montreal’. (www.sustainablefoodtrust.com)

7. Affordable housing London needs more genuinely affordable housing.   The report of the commission on social housing convened by the charity Shelter, published in January 2019, is timely. Building for our future – A vision for social housing (Shelter, 2019) calls for a huge expansion of social housing nationally. The Mayor of London remarks in his introduction to the draft London Plan 2018: ‘What we need is growth that allows us to build thousands of genuinely affordable homes at the same time as creating a more inclusive, greener and safer city that supports the health and wellbeing of all Londoners.’ (Draft London Plan 2018, Greater London Assembly)   Still closer to home, Camden Council ‘will aim to maximise the supply of affordable housing and exceed a borough-wide strategic target of 5,300 additional affordable homes from 2016/17-2030/31, and aim for an appropriate mix of affordable housing types to meet the needs of households unable to access market housing.’ (Camden Local Plan 2017, para. 3.83, page 65)   The shortage of genuinely affordable housing is as acute in the King’s Cross/St. Pancras area as anywhere. It is true that blocks of flats are currently being constructed on Camley Street. The most recent units have a starting price of £1,075,000. Meanwhile, the average annual household income in the St. Pancras and Somers Town ward, where Camley Street is situated, is £35,000. People on ordinary incomes, often doing essential work in the area (nurses, school teachers, council workers…) have no chance of buying or even privately renting property close to the area where they work, and waste large quantities of their time and money on long commutes to distant suburbs and dormitory towns. The ‘food quarter’ development that we envisage would also provide a large number of genuinely affordable homes for rent at prices which people on ordinary incomes could afford, thus making a significant contribution to meeting London’s needs for social housing, supporting Camden’s and the Mayor of London’s policy in this area. Mock-up of integration of potential housing and work space in Camley Street

8. The Neighbourhood Plan Camley Street Neighbourhood Forum has completed a six-week statutory consultation on a Neighbourhood Plan which would allow the existing businesses to remain on the site in new and better accommodation, offer opportunities for new businesses to set up there, and provide hundreds of new homes. This Plan is currently being improved in the light of the 113 responses to it which were received from local businesses, local residents and interested organisations, notably Camden Council, which is the principal landowner on the site. In the next few months, the Plan will go to examination by an independent examiner nominated by Camden. Should the Plan receive the examiner’s approval, it will then go to a referendum at which all those on the electoral roll in the area covered by the Plan will be entitled to vote. Should more than 50% of those voting be in favour of the Plan, it will succeed. The core issues the community wishes to address. These issues can be summarised as follows:  • reinforcing the role of the area as a place of employment, with the current range of businesses providing a core of established enterprises; • stitching into the area the social infrastructure required to improve well-being and quality of life in the neighbourhood for residents; • the provision of a range of housing that is genuinely affordable to local people; • improvements to the quality and range of green infrastructure in the neighbourhood. Proposed Camden High Line development linking Camley Street to Camden (www.camdenhighline.com)

9. Architectural Plans Architectural plans drawn up for Camley Street Neighbourhood Forum by the architects Karakusevic Carson, who have long and successful experience of working with London boroughs on projects of this kind, envisage a development of the Camley Street industrial estate which both secures future business activity there and provides new homes.   First, the plans would allow for the expansion of employment opportunities on the estate to about 1,000 jobs. Many of these would be in the food sector; others, such as the laundry business presently on the site, would be for service industries more generally; others still, particularly in the smaller workshop spaces which the plans allow for, would be for small businesses in the knowledge, computer, craft and cultural industries.   All the existing businesses which wish to remain on the site (which is most of them) would be decanted, one by one, from their present units to new and environmentally sustainable superior new accommodation.  Secondly, the plans would allow for the construction of up to 1,000 new dwellings. As many as possible would be for rent at genuinely affordable levels. The exact proportion would need to be compatible with the financial viability of the project as a whole, but we envisage having 50% of the dwellings for rent at levels one third of average household income in the St Pancras and Somers Town ward. The latest building techniques and modern environmental awareness mean that there is no incompatibility between ‘basic’ industries such as food and ‘superstructure’ industries such as knowledge and culture; nor between industrial and residential land use. Residents of hundreds of new homes in Camley Street could live happily and peacefully with their neighbours in mixed-use industries.   Images of new buildings on Camley Street

10. A Sociable, Environmentally Sustainable Mixed-Use Future Our vision is: ’To create a vibrant hub of innovative sustainable urban community living in Camley Street.’ The industries there will use fleets of electric vehicles. Their accommodation will have the most energy-efficient sources of heating and power, as will the residential dwellings. There will be: • No parking space for individual private cars; instead, a system of electric transport will connect Camley Street with King’s Cross/St. Pancras and other parts of Camden.   • Our community refectory, shops, cafes, restaurants, a health centre and social spaces. • Green areas for the production of food as well as for leisure activities.   • New pedestrian and cycling bridges will connect the street with the King’s Cross lands across the St. Pancras railway tracks to the east, and with the extensive redevelopments currently being planned across the Regent’s Canal to the west. There is also the High Line Project which will use the old railway line to link Camley Street directly with Camden   • Cycling facilitated everywhere. • A bike-hire as well as an electric car-hire station.   In sum, an area currently very close to the urban hubs of Camden Town and King’s Cross/St. Pancras will come to have its own definition, interacting socially, economically and culturally with its near neighbours, and continuing to supply essential needs, notably in the food sector, to London and further afield.