Record on gas stinks

Published: 10 June, 2011

• IN my recent letter (We’re still waiting for reassurance on estate gas safety, May 27), I posed some rhetorical questions in relation to Homes for Islington’s (HfI’s) “reassuring” statement that “on Spa Green estate, the National Grid will have risk-assessed the need to replace gas pipes there”. 

This statement was in response to our complaints that, despite there being gas leaks at three of the six main gas risers which serve Tunbridge House and Wells House, there appeared to be no plan to replace the remaining gas risers of similar age and condition. 

I suggested that, if there was any evidence that a risk assessment had in fact been carried out, details of the conclusions would have been more reassuring than the assumption-based statement.

No such details were forthcoming and probably just as well as it would have caused even more embarrassment as on Saturday there were further gas leaks on two of the remaining risers, which resulted in yet more emergency shutdowns for replacement of the gas pipes that Stephen Kirrage, HfI’s director of property services, had attempted to assure us were safe.

The writing was on the wall with three gas mains emergencies between September 2009 and January 2011, but HfI was obviously looking at its home-spun performance monitoring information instead. The most recent gas leaks make five successive escapes where, thankfully, residents smelled the gas and took action before an explosion occurred but, with performance like this, luck is bound to run out sooner or later. 

Perhaps the next risk assessment that needs to be carried out is the risk of HfI, Islington Council and the National Grid being convicted of corporate manslaughter – based on our experiences over the past 18 months the risk rating is high and HfI’s record on gas stinks.

LUCINDA BOWERS
Committee member, Spa Green Tenant Management Organisation

• SHOULD I have been surprised to see Popham 1 estate featured in this weeks episode of the BBC2 series Psychoville? With all the bad repairs and ongoing work that amount to our estate being ruined, is this now all we are fit for – to be in a creepy comedy show?

Despite protests, petitions and concrete proof that work does not need doing, HfI has ignored all of this and is allowing National Grid to carry out the gas lateral work. 

Popham 1 has had no gas leaks in 32 years, yet Spa Green has had at least two more in the past week, and HfI and National Grid are ignoring this. Why?

Popham 1 was the subject of scare-mongering by HfI and National Grid some months ago on the basis that we could explode at any time. Should work not concentrate on an estate where the possibility of this happening is more of a danger to residents?

I hope that when residents get to vote on HfI or no HfI, they will remember all the problems it has caused over the past few years, and how it simply ignores the residents (the ones who pay HfI staff their wages), and vote with a massive No.

MARTIN RUTHERFORD
Chair, Popham 1 Estate Tenants’ and Residents’ Association