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Disgruntled tenants on the Kiln Estate |
Tenants freeze in homes with 45-year-old heating
Olympic village will be built before
new system
EXASPERATED tenants whose homes have a 45-year-old heating
system have been told it will take as long to install new radiators
as it will to build London’s Olympic Village.
Families living in Kiln Place estate in Gospel Oak claim outdated
blow heating – which pumps out air from two vents on the
bottom floor of each flat – has made people ill and leaves
bedrooms upstairs cold.
Residents have criticised the council for fitting the estate
– which was built in the 1960s and has never had a heating
overhaul – with a £1 million security system when
tenants had been calling for their homes to be renovated.
At a meeting two weeks ago, a housing official told tenants
the council did not have cash for any improvements, and that
they would have to wait until 2012 – the year of the Olympics
– for new heating.
One neighbour, who did not wish to be named, warned she would
have to leave her home if things did not improve.
She said: “It’s a disgrace that people have to live
like this. It’s horrible in the winter. Apart from being
freezing, it is also really expensive, and if you haven’t
got the money to pay for extra electric heaters – like
some of our older neighbours – then you go cold throughout
the winter.”
She added that the council had told her to seek an ‘exchange’
with a family on a better-heated estate, but that she could
not find any takers.
She added: “Who would want to swap with anyone living here?”
Khadija Tarambi, 30, who has lived in Kiln Place for 10 years,
claims the hot air pumping through the rooms dries out her children’s
skin and has inflamed her son’s eczema.
Town Hall Tory group leader Councillor Piers Wauchope visited
the estate recently and promised to install central heating
over the summer if the Tories gained power in May.
Labour leader of the council and Gospel Oak ward councillor
Raj Chada poured scorn on the Tory pledge, arguing they hadn’t
said how they would fund it. He added: “We’re trying
to find a way of improving the heating, but capital investment
is limited.”
He added that consultative letters would be landing on residents’
doormats in the next two weeks offering them a choice of short-term
improvements. |
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