Our battle is over costs

• DENNIS Kleinberg suggests that we as leaseholders on the Whitbread estate are resisting major works proposed by Homes for Islington (HfI) because we are miniature property barons and speculators (Estate tenants entitled to decent standard of living, February 5). Really, it’s because we believe the works will waste a lot of money and will damage Whitbread without improving it.

We have taken it to the Leasehold Valuation Tribunal because nearly a year of negotiating with HfI without a ‘referee’ has proved useless. It has asserted legal rights and duties which are not HfI’s. It treats flexibility as weakness, while sticking rigidly to its own ideas. Facts and feelings for which it doesn’t care are simply ignored. HfI would not agree to independent conciliation. So we need the tribunal.

As leaseholders, we want all our neighbours’ flats to be at least as comfortable as our own. Sadly, that’s not the case, because a serious number of rented flats suffer badly from condensation. This is due to mismanagement by HfI. But its proposal to spend about £1.5million ripping out Whitbread’s good, single-glazed windows and putting in a double-glazed pattern used routinely in tower blocks – unsuited to the smaller Whitbread buildings – will not produce a remedy. 

As the official literature of the Glass and Glazing Federation makes plain, the causes and cures of condensation have little or nothing to do with window structure. It’s deplorable that HfI should encourage people to believe otherwise. Clearly, the officer they routinely turn to is Major Works – and lowly ranks of leaseholders and tenants must be persuaded to obey his commands, however counterproductive. We strongly agree with the improvements Mr Kleinberg wants. 

We shall demonstrate before the tribunal that all of them can be put promptly and effectively in place for a fraction of the money HfI wants to spend on operations that won’t work.

MAY CONDAY, EILEEN DAVIS, CLAUDINE D'SOUZA, KARL FOSTER, STEPHAN HAISELDEN, NAWAZ IMAM, IMRE LENGYEL, BASIL MORGAN, BRUCE PAGE AND KARIN VERZARIU 
Whitbread estate, EC1