Unsafe, falling to bits, yet they’ve put our rents up

Published: 24 March, 2011

• I SEE that London Fire Brigade are taking action against Lewisham council regarding the failure to provide fire escapes for residents in the block in which two women were killed and four seriously injured.  

Our council flats in Royal College Street, Camden Town, are in a converted four-storey 110-year-old mansion block in very poor condition. They have zero health and safety as they are allegedly “pre-regulation” (despite the conversion being done in 1985) with no fire escapes, no fire alarms, no signs whatsoever, no way out, to the point where even the fire brigade refuse to comment on the subject when giving their “advice”on what to do in the case of a fire – other than to sit on the window ledge of the front of the building, as they cannot reach the back windows. Even then I have been told their ladders do not reach high enough to my own personal flat on the fourth floor (and obviously everyone else on the fourth floor). 

Even worse, despite negligible maintenance to our buildings which are old and shabby with numerous problems such as leaks, backing-up sewers, cracked and broken front walls, horrible interior painted corridors, which are filthy, and only most cursory caretaking and cleaning, our rents have increased 7.2 per cent.  

How can this be possible when public sector staff are taking pay freezes, job losses, council tax is frozen, and the bank base rate is next to nothing?  

Is our rent subsidising other areas rather than being put to use on necessary housing issues? Where is this extraordinary r­ise in revenue being allocated because it cannot possibly be reflected in an improvement in standards or rising costs of services and staff?

JULIE TOLCHARD
Royal College Street, NW1