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The flats which nobody wants?
THERE is something fanciful going on with Camden council officials.
Facing the lovely green sweep of Primrose Hill stands a block of studio flats, usually filled with elderly tenants placed by Central and Cecil Housing Trust (See page 7).
Many of the tenants come from a council waiting list.
This is a block of flats in Regent’s Park Road private tenants would give anything to move into.
And who would blame them?
Nearby private flats – admittedly double the size – go for more than £600 a week largely because of the beautiful view that has inspired writers and painters down the decades.
However, we are now being led to believe by the council that men and women on their housing list are so picky about where they live that they wouldn’t live in these studio flats, even though the rent is a giveaway at around £60.
Cynics among other tenants of the Trust see a link between the flats that no one wants and a campaign they won last year to stop a redevelopment of the block.
What that is it is hard to evaluate because the facts and figures governing the Trust’s lettings, at one end, and the corresponding facts held by the council, are not being made known either to this newspaper or to the tenants.
Until they are, we, and the tenants, are left wondering that something strange is going on at the Town Hall as well as at the Cecil Housing Trust.
Murky goings-on
THE higher you go in government the better civil servants appear to behave.
At Whitehall, civil servants think, and politicians do.
But at local government level, certainly in Camden, it seems the reverse occurs. Here, civil servants think as well as do.
That at least lawyers will set out to prove if and when they appear in the High Court to plead their cause that council officials have wrongly given control of the prized King’s Cross site to the developers, Argent Ltd.
According to the opinion of the lawyers for the King’s Cross Think Again group, they are optimistic a judge is likely to hear their case (See page 2).
Once a judicial review is underway, a stone may be lifted on the murky goings-on over this planning application.
We have long been deeply concerned about an inner cabal of officials at the Town Hall who appear to want to lord it over our elected councillors. The reprehensible treatment of Councillor Brian Woodrow amply illustrates this state of affairs. |
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