Council’s TV aerial upgrade unnecessary

Published: 1 September, 2011

• I HAVE previously tried to warn that Camden is spending huge sums of other people’s money on overkill aerial system upgrades and maintenance contracts for around 23,000 council properties. 

This does not just affect council tenants. Residents in private blocks are at similar risk from private landlords. And how many people realise that it also costs the taxpayer?

Tenants on housing benefits get their share of the upgrade cost bundled into their benefit.  

I have been researching this for specialist technical magazines and was shocked to discover that Camden’s commissioning was based on 2007/2008 facts that are now hopelessly out of date.

It has also become clear that some of those commissioning upgrade work do not understand the technical issues, while others prefer not to acknowledge the facts and most residents are being blinded by techno-speak.

The details are too tangled to put in a letter but the bottom lines can be easily summed up.

Old UHF roof aerial systems will often need upgrading to continue receiving freeview digital TV and radio after analogue TV switches off (mid-2012 in London).

But Camden is going far further and installing IRS (Integrated Reception Systems) which also connect to two satellite dishes.

This is unnecessary and absurd given the cash-strapped climate.

Those who want to pay for more programmes that freeview delivers can use a top-up TV box with the freeview feed or subscribe to Virgin cable or join with a few other flats to get Sky to install a single shared dish.

There have also been huge advances in broadband since 2007/2008. Higher speeds and lower costs (both for fixed line and mobile access) make it practical to receive internet radio and TV stations from around the world. Pay TV by broadband is available from BT Vision.

And all these options let Camden force tenants to remove unauthorised personal satellite dishes.

One argument in support of IRS is that the satellite dishes can deliver foreign language programmes to non-English speaking council tenants.

This seems a very strange way for Camden to spend others’ money while closing libraries.

BARRY FOX, Belsize Grove, NW3