Camden New Journal - Letters: Central heating

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Camden New Journal - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 18 October 2007

Promises on central heating

• REGARDING Chris Philp’s letter extolling the Tories’ virtues (Full story of Kiln Place, September 27) – he seems to have ignored the promise made prior to the election that “The work will start this summer.
“Once the central heating is installed, the communal central heating will be disconnected and neither tenants nor leaseholders will be charged for communal central heating”.
Leaseholders had faith in this promise, but now find that not only will they be charged, but charged double the going rate for the job.
Councillor Keith Moffitt says in a letter that an independent contractor would obviously do the work cheaper as, on a district heating system of this scale, the preliminaries are approximately 30 per cent of the installation cost.
Add to this 10 per cent for management fees and 7.17 per cent for supervision it accounts for the mark up.
It was stated that the boiler has a 30-year life span, but ignores the fact that 20 years of this has already elapsed.
The boiler and pipes are due for renewal in 2018 for which leaseholders will have to pay yet again. It was said that an independent system has a life span of only 10 to 12 years – although British Gas estimates approx 16 to 18 years.
Certain leaseholders who were ignored when they applied for permission to install their own system on medical grounds (it is an implied term of the lease that such licence is not to be unreasonably withheld) went ahead and are now under the threat of having it removed and replaced with the communal system.
At a meeting of leaseholders held on October 1 they overwhelmingly said they would prefer to opt out and make their own arrangements.
Leaseholders are voters and feel we have been treated with complete disregard.
BARBARA GREEN
Secretary
Kiln Place TRA
NW5

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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