Neighbours living in a block of flats are worried that their homes will be overlooked by a new mental health hospital across the road.
Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust (C&I) was given permission in 2021 to demolish a small community mental health centre in Lowther Road and replace it with a four-storey outpatient facility.
At the time, Islington Council imposed a planning condition on the development to protect the privacy of neighbouring homes, asking that obscured glazing and screens be installed.
But people living at Arcadia Court, a block of 12 flats directly facing the hospital, claim that with construction on the site almost complete, the measures put in place to meet this condition do not seem sufficient.
One leaseholder, Anton Tol, has described the partially obscured glazing as “disappointing”, adding that it directly gives one window a view into his flat, which is less than 10 metres from the hospital.
He said: “During the planning committee itself, they were quite clear that the reason for obscured glazing was to prevent undue overlooking.
“The final proposal was to have partial obscuring, which means an opaque film over the window, but it’s transparent at the bottom and at the top.
“So, it seems possible to craft this proposal in a way to satisfy the condition without actually meeting the goals.”
Anton, who has lived at Arcadia Court since the end of 2019, said that affected neighbours were not notified by the council that the condition about glazing was to be discharged in October 2022.
This meant they were not able to raise their concerns about the glazing before approval was granted.
Islington Council has said that public consultation was “not required” for the condition to be discharged, but that planning officers provided “detailed responses" to residents of Arcadia Court throughout the process.
In January this year, neighbours were offered a site visit, where they discovered that people in the building would be able to look directly into their homes.
They have now called for more obscured glazing and privacy screens to be installed.
Anton said: “The argument is that if you stand by the window, then on your eye-level, the window is obscured.
“But if you take a few steps back into the room and you look out the window, you would be able to see through the bottom and top part that is not obscured into the other building.
“I’ve also been trying to get a privacy screen on the balcony because that’s the main avenue for them to see into my living room.”
The support neighbours received from the council on the issue had also been less than expected, Anton claimed.
He said: “We thought the council was on our side, and would help us navigate the bureaucracy.
“That was the main disappointment – that this didn’t really happen.
“At the end of the day there will be people working there and we will be living here, so I’m sure they’re not very interested at looking into my living room.
“We would have probably have talked to them and figured something out, but if there’s a permanent structure that prevents overlooking, that’s obviously much better.”
North London Mental Health Partnership, which is made up of C&I and Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health (BEH) NHS Trust, has said that the new building is “fully compliant” with its planning permission.
But a spokesperson added that after listening to concerns from Arcadia Court residents, new obscure window glazing is due to be fitted “over the next few weeks”.
An Islington Council spokesperson said: “The original planning permission for the hospital building at Lowther Road did require measures to protect residential amenity, including potential overlooking from the proposed building and to meet that requirement, a film has been applied to obscure the relevant windows which also enables increased natural light for people using the hospital.”
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