Whitbread estate home-owners save windows ...and £10,000

Published: 29 October, 2010
by PETER GRUNER

A FORMER Sunday Times investigative journalist has helped win an important ruling which will save home-owners on his Whitbread estate in Clerkenwell up to £10,000 each.

Bruce Page, 72, who led the Insight team under editor Harold Evans in the 1960s, was part of a group of 25 leaseholders – owners of former council flats – who refused to pay the sum demanded for new windows on the estate in Whitecross Street.

Housing agency Homes for Islington wanted to remove the current single-glazed, sliding sash windows and replace them with a double-glazed version under a £1.4million re­furbishment scheme.

The story featured in the Tribune in January this year.

But the leaseholders argued that their current windows were perfectly efficient and did not need replacing. They even hired a barrister – at a cost of £4,500, split between them – and were preparing to go to court when Islington’s new Labour council decided to accept their case.

The estate was built in the 1980s for workers at the former Whitbread brewery and later leased to the council.

Mr Page’s wife, Anne, was a Labour councillor in Islingtom’s St Peter’s ward from 1974-1986

He said: “They wanted to rip out all our windows. We think it was totally unnecessary. Why should we pay for something we don’t want or need?”

HfI insisted that condensation problems experienced by some residents on the estate would be cured by new windows. However, the leaseholders argued that condensation is solved by improved ventilation and window maintenance, rather than double-glazing.

Following pressure from former Islington Lib Dem Mayor Councillor Jyoti Vaja, HfI employed an independent surveyor. The survey found the current windows to be mainly in good working order, although a large number were dirty and badly maintained.

HfI then held a meeting with residents to discuss the survey findings, but just before last Christmas said it would go ahead with the new windows scheme anyway.

Mr Page added that leaseholders were not against general improvements to the estate. “We were simply against sound windows being gratuitously destroyed and replaced by overpriced double-glazing,” he said. “The only winners under this scheme would have been the contractors.”

Executive member for housing Labour Cllr James Murray said that  leaseholders’ rights should be respected. “HFI have listened to what these group have said and have acted,” he said. “Leaseholders should be aware of their rights and each case should be heard and treated individually.”     

Anne Page is a former chairwoman of social services and founding chair of the local race relations committee. 

In her day housing was conducted in house and which she believes had some advantages.“What  I like about today’s system is local area offices. What is bad is that with an arm’s length organisation you don’t know who to go to or who is accountable. There is an elected board but we don’t know who they are and they don’t have the same clout as elected members of the council.”