|
|
 |
| |
Rowley and Ainsworth Way residents Charlie Hedges and Sara Bell in the home of Ana Lopes |
‘Why radiators offer leaves us cold’
Tenants reject new heating and insist they should continue to get warmth from their walls
A HEATED row over new radiators has led to tenants pleading with the Town Hall not to mess about with their homes.
Residents living on the Alexandra and Ainsworth estate in West Hampstead, known locally as Rowley Way, want to spurn the offer of new radiators and keep their “heated walls” – a unusual feature in part of the Grade-II listed blocks.
Senior councillors are due to decide whether the changes must be made next month.
Tenants are so concerned about the disruption and cost of the project that they have hired their own consultants for £3,000 to show that it would be cheaper to simply retain the original design. They think breakdown problems can be solved by replacing the external pipes which help heat up the flats, rather than installing radiators.
But council officials have recommended that the walls come down and protests have so far fallen on deaf ears.
“We just don’t understand why they want the radiators,” said Sara Bell, from the estate’s tenants and residents association (TRA).
Engineers hired by the TRA, Fulcrum Consulting, reported the coils inside the walls do not need replacing.
Ms Bell says that putting radiators into each home would cost in excess of £6million, while the scheme backed by tenants and proposed by their engineers would come to little more than £4million.
She said: “If Camden had come to us with incontrovertible evidence that our heated walls were severely failing, we’d say fine. But they have not and they cannot because that is not the case. We are a Grade II-listed building and, although the heating is not listed, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.”
Ms Bell, along with Charlie Hedges, the former council housing chief who lives on the estate, and Ana Lopes, both members of the TRA, warned that the building was not designed to have variations in heat between the homes. They said radiators could potentially damage its structure, which is supposed to have constant heat throughout the building.
A decision is due on October 14 when the plans go before the council’s cabinet.
A Town Hall spokesman said: “The heating coils installed in residents’ homes are 30 years old and industry guidance shows they are at the end of their useful life.
“Several have failed and replacing them is not possible. They are built into the walls and encased in concrete, and removing them would jeopardise the structure of the building.”
The spokesman also warned that the current system had very high maintenance costs. A new system would be greener, the spokesman added.
But Conservative councillor Chris Philp, chairman of the council’s housing scrutiny committee, said: “It does sound to me like the residents’ views are being ignored.” |
 |
|
|
|
Your comments:
HOW right the chairman of Camden's housing scrutiny committee is when he says that the views of the residents of Rowley Way are being ignored.Camden's proposal to replace Rowley Way's unique and successful heating system with radiators has been costed at £6-7 Million.The residents' proposal to repair the existing system at a cost of £4million has been shown to be as good as and in some ways better than anything that would be installed today.Rowley Way is one of the jewels in Camden's crown - very few buildings get listed Grade 2* so soon after being built. Camden councillors surely have a duty to see that taxpayers money is spent wisely and to look after their buildings.By repairing the existing heating system, as the residents suggest, Camden would not only save £2million, they would also be preserving an important part of Camden's very special heritage. It looks like a win win solution. Why are the residents' proposals being ignored?
S. Staples
Rowley Way
I AM a resident on Rowley Way and have been for 20 years. The heating system that is common to all the properties on the Estate is unique and given the open design of the interiors of all the units is ideal for pupose. The whole Estate is grade 2 listed and the heating, although not included in the listed status,is integeral to the overall unique quality of the developement. The proposed alterations to the exisitng heating can only be seen as a retrograde step. The Council argue that the heatong is past its best by date and that some of the heating coils have failed. This is true but given the number of units the failure rate is very small indeed, down into single figures in fact. To attempt to install conventional radiators where all the pipe work would have to be surface mounted is verging on the criminal. The Estate is a single concrete structure and the floor and wall seperations in each property are concrete. There is a great deal of anger and frustration amongst the tenants of Rowley Way regarding these proposed alterations and cleary the wishes of the residents have been totally ignored by Camden Council.
J. Bell
|
| |
|
|
|
