To let – well-appointed apartments?

Published: 11 March 2010

• AM I correct in understanding that profits generated by the Crown Commissioners, pass to the Treasury?
Therefore, the Crown Estates housing is in public ownership on that assumption. Short of the present heir to the crown intervening to prevent the sale, were the houses and flats to be placed in a trust, for letting only to those on ordinary wages this would protect present and future tenants from rapacious landlords. As Her Majesty’s children have grown up, and now live in their own estates, could not some of the apartments at Buckingham Palace be let out to those in need of such. This would help reduce many council housing lists.
JONATHAN RUSSELL
Great Titchfield Street, W1

• WELL done to the excellent deputation to Camden’s full council meeting asking the Town Hall to put its weight behind the campaign to save hundreds of key worker flats on the Cumberland Market estate.
I ask the leadership of Camden Council to put its money where its mouth is – and insist on a full ballot of tenants.  It is the only answer to this unhappy saga.
To give readers an idea of scale of the loss to our social mix, the loss of Crown Estate key worker housing here would constitute almost 2/3 of all the new social housing pledged in the King’s Cross development now underway.
Together with the tenants I believe that Crown’s assurances are neither specific nor detailed enough to give full reassurance even for existing tenancies where a sale to take place. 
There appears to be little in place to stop regulated tenants being moved under ‘suitable alternative accommodation’ arrangements.
Moreover, at the House of Commons Treasury select committee last week Roger Bright, their chief executive, admitted that vacant homes are being kept deliberately empty pending a sale, leaving key-workers on the waiting list in limbo.
Revealingly, Bright refused to give any assurances whatsoever about this and the real chances are that any new owner would seek to make a swift profit by “flipping” or selling off homes as they become vacant and hiking rents up over time to market levels.
I don’t even want to think about what would happen to the wonderful allotments there, if they fell into the hands of developers. 
The proposals will have a really damaging effect on local communities, pricing out essential workers and changing the social mix of the borough.
Regardless of political persuasion, Camden must follow government ministers, Frank Dobson MP and campaigners and insist the Crown Estate hold a ballot of its tenants on the proposal.
CLLR THEO BLACKWELL
Labour, Regent’s Park ward