Camden New Journal - Letters: Give us a chance to protect Holly Lodge

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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 27 September 2007

Give us a chance to protect Holly Lodge

• THE Residents’ Campaign and the discussions that we have had with Cllr Chris Naylor and council officers has been primarily to put the case for Camden providing some direct investment in the bedsits from their £50 million capital programme and prevent the need for immediate sales.
But despite the fact that Camden knows these seven blocks have very poor living conditions and are unfit to relet to new tenants, we have been told several times by council officers that they are unlikely to receive any funding from the capital programme. Council officers take the pragmatic view that they don’t want to directly invest where they can see another solution – even though this other solution will mean probable sale of over 50 per cent of the properties concerned.
We have discussed some ‘options’ but it appears that these are very limited, partly due to the fact that Camden is not the freeholder of the estate. This means that in fact housing associations would not be able to afford to take on the empty properties – unless they were then going to sell them.
In July we made a deputation to the executive to make the case to the members. Cllr Naylor’s response was to say, “The four estates that are listed (for regeneration) are four estates where we do not have enough money to do what we would like to do on those estates. That isn’t to say that we don’t have any money for investment, we don’t have enough to invest as fully as we would like. We are considering options, we haven’t ruled anything in, we haven’t ruled anything out” but it seems that the current investment schemes that are being looked at for Holly Lodge do rule out direct investment, and only schemes that are ‘self-funded’, are to be considered.
Most of the bedsit residents would rather protect this estate, not be its asset strippers, but that may be their choice; do you want to continue to live in poor conditions with no heating, toilet or bathroom of your own? Or would you be prepared to enter a scheme to provide those things by selling the empty properties? If you were a mother with a new baby living in one room what would you do?
Many of us feel privileged to live in an environment and community like Holly Lodge. We shouldn’t have to ask the current residents to sacrifice that privilege for others in the future.
So we ask the council again, don’t tie these seven blocks into a scheme that can only be funded by developers. Don’t rule them all out of the Capital Programme. Give the residents at least a chance of protecting the ‘Option’ of living in this special place for future council tenants.
Elizabeth Doherty
Joint Secretary
Holly Lodge RA

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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