Simon Jenkins is wrong to write that it was local opposition that sank Roger Stirk Harbour + Partners’ Chelsea barracks scheme (Opinion, 14 May). Most local groups were supportive and it was my understanding that the planners were going to recommend approval. As was subsequently set out in court, it was Prince Charles’s direct intervention that led the Qataris to pull the plug. As for the prince’s wider influence, I took a small straw poll of developers after the barracks scheme collapsed. A majority said that while they didn’t necessarily show plans to the prince, they did consult his advisers on choice of architects. As one put it: “We’re in the business of risk mitigation.” Influence is not only exerted through formal letters to ministers.
Richard Rogers
Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners
• Prince Charles has been at the cutting edge of regenerative agriculture and advanced holistic health for decades. The Prince’s Trust and his many projects around the world support and improve the lives of thousands of people. What some fail to understand is that when, for example, he turns his attention to saving the albatross, it involves much more than the bird. It involves habitat regeneration and all that runs with it. Nothing is done in isolation.
He works with and has gained knowledge from experts in agriculture, ecology, health and many other important areas concerned with the regeneration and sustainability. Yet he has been labelled a crank. Absurd. This is a democracy. Charles has as much right to air his views as anyone else. The shame is not in the doing of it but in the misinformed reportage that lacks investigation castigating him for it. We would be well advised to take heed of much of what he is saying and a little less notice of the corporations that are slowly but surely poisoning and wrecking our planet.
Kate Travers
Sutton, Cambridgeshire
