Estate claims

Published: 29 April, 2010

• I OBJECT to claims about the recent works to the Holly Lodge estate that the Labour Party have presented to the Highgate ward in the recent copy of Labour Rose newsletter.
They claim that leaseholders on the Whittington and Holly Lodge estate have been faced with unfair charges for repairs “because of consistent failures by Tory/Lib Dem run Camden to manage the works and costs effectively”.
This is simply untrue: we all know that the contracts for those works were written under the Labour administration and in the case of Holly Lodge the works were well underway in 2004 during the Labour administration before the Tories and Lib Dems took over in May 2006.
The specifications were inadequate in detail for the Holly Lodge major works and the management by Camden’s officers under the Labour administration was inefficient and disorganised to the point of shoddiness.
To date snagging has not been completed.
For Labour to put about in their pre-election propaganda that this is the fault of the Tory/Lib Dem coalition is specious in the extreme and will lose votes: the residents and leaseholders, who have been on the estate way longer than the Labour Rose writer’s memory extends back, know that what they are asserting is simply false.
The issues at stake are far more important. To abdicate responsibility for the Labour contribution to the problem of overspent and poorly-managed capital projects in the Highgate ward is more than just rewriting history, it is untrue and bodes ill for voter confidence.
We were well served for many years by Maggie Cosin who worked hard for us to manage the failings of both Apollo and the Camden officers running the project: to put this sort of misinformation out does disservice to our intellects and memories and to the current Labour candidates who are hoping to get elected.
I hope that Labour future freesheets will correct this information.
DEBORAH FROOME
Address supplied