Fears Chinatown will return to the bad old days with its illegal basement gambling dens

Extracts from a letter to Westminster’s senior licensing officer concerning the go-ahead for a new adult gaming centre in Gerrard Street, W1

• I AM deeply disappointed with the outcome and feel that the council has placed profit over good, positive, cohesive community relations, (Fears over gambling in Chinatown, February 18).

It seems that representations made by concerned Chinatown businesses, community organisations and individuals like myself, have been completely ignored.

When gambling problems and loan shark debts increase among some of the more vulnerable workers in the Chinese / East and South East Asian workers and communities there, it will be Chinatown community organisations and [council] social services left to pick up the pieces. Far better to avoid this pernicious problem in the first place.

The council’s planning department reportedly had completely ignored representations from the Chinese Information and Advice Centre and that, to me, smacks of lack of respect for democratic voices from the community most impacted by this disastrous decision.

It’s like the council is shooting itself in the foot and flying against its own policy of making the West End more “family friendly”, instead wanting to turn Chinatown back to the bad old days of the 1980s with its illegal basement gambling dens and vulnerable workers whose lives were blighted by gambling addiction.

DAVID KS TSE
LLB, Soho resident
& Chinatown supporter