Double-take over bill for £12,000 windows on Whitbread estate

Published: 29 January 2010
by PETER GRUNER

A FORMER Sunday Times investigative journalist is behind a campaign to halt a £1.4million plan to renovate windows on his estate in Clerkenwell.
Bruce Page, who led the Insight team under editor Harold Evans in the 1960s, is part of a group of leaseholders ­– owners of former council flats – refusing to pay an estimated £10,000- £12,000 each for new windows on the estate in Whitecross Street.
He spoke out following last week’s furious meeting between more than 150 leaseholders and Islington Council Lib Dem leader Councillor Terry Stacy at the town hall.
The group is threatening to go to a valuation tribunal if the borough’s housing agency, Homes for Islington (HfI), insists on replacing single-glazed sliding sash windows with a double- glazed version on the Whitbread estate.
The estate was built in the 1980s for workers at the former Whitbread brewery and later leased to the council.
Mr Page, 72, whose wife Anne was an Islington Labour councillor in the 1980s, said: “They want to rip out every window on the estate. We think it is totally unnecessary. Why should we pay for something we don’t want or need?”
HfI insists that condensation problems would be cured by new windows. But leaseholders argue that condensation would be solved by better ventilation and window maintenance, rather than double-glazing.
HfI employed a private independent surveyor, following pressure from Lib Dem councillor Jyoti Vaja, who looked at windows in 32 flats. The survey found the existing windows to be mainly in good working order although a large number were dirty and badly maintained.
A meeting was held where residents discussed the survey findings, but just before Christmas HfI said it would go ahead with the new window scheme anyway.
Mr Page added that leaseholders were not against general improvements to the estate. “We are simply against sound windows being gratuitously destroyed and replaced by overpriced double-glazing,” he added. “The only winners under this scheme are the contractors.”
An HfI spokesman said letters had been sent to residents to inform them of the situation.
l Leaseholders having work done at an estate in Finsbury Park will not have to pay the costs of scaffolding, following a landmark ruling.
Islington Conservative and trainee barrister Patricia Napier took the case to a tribunal on behalf of leaseholders on the Andover estate last year.
Leaseholders were being asked to pay up to £20,000 for new windows and pigeon deterrents on balconies, including the cost of scaffolding.
The tribunal agreed with leaseholders that scaffolding was unnecessary to do the job as the replacement of windows and work on balconies could be done from inside the flats.
The decision means the cost of the work has been reduced by £320,000, but it has yet to be decided how much leaseholders will get off their bills.