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Camden News - by RICHARD OSLEY
Published: 4 September 2008

The Waterlow Park lodge

Is this the UK’s most desirable council house?

Park lodge ready for its first tenants

IT is a dream home in Highgate, boasting three bedrooms and a 26-acre park for a back garden.
The mock-Elizabethan house benefits, in estate agents’ speak, from views across London, is listed by English Heritage, has recently been modernised throughout and would fetch more than £1 million on the market.
But the former park-keeper’s lodge at Waterlow Park is about to become one of the most desirable council houses in the country.
Used for decades by council staff as a storehouse for rakes, spades and lawnmowers, the yellow-painted Victorian lodge in Swain’s Lane is waiting for its first council tenants to move in after Town Hall housing bosses decided to use it for emergency housing.
The first tenants will be making their home in the lodge while the builders are in at their current flat, which needs urgent repairs. A council spokeswoman said the decision to house tenants in the lodge was a short- term measure while a decision on its permanent use is awaited.
Lid Dem housing chief Councillor Chris Naylor would not be drawn this week on the long-term future of the lodge, as other departments apart from housing might have uses for it. He said: “It is great we make use of this particular property to help with Camden’s housing demand.” The council house waiting list tops 16,000.
Cllr Naylor added: “We need to look after these buildings and maximise the benefits we get from them. I am sure we would be keen to keep this property as part of the housing stock but there will no doubt be other demands on it from other departments. We will have to discuss this further.
“It is ridiculous that a property of its value has been used for storage for so long, and it’s good to have it used for housing someone, even if it’s on a temporary basis.”
Friends of Waterlow Park chairwoman Ceridwen Roberts welcomed the new use for the lodge. “Until recently it was used just to store things and it is nice to see it being used as a house again,” she said.

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