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Why we sought settlement on Spens House flats
• I’M replying on behalf of Camden Council to your article about Spens House as many of the claims made were factually incorrect and misleading (Flats sale ‘ludicrous’, January 29).
The council has never owned Spens House, which is a privately owned 30-unit block in Lamb’s Conduit Street, mainly one-bedroom flats.
Your article alleges that decisions were made in private. This is untrue. Resolving this issue was the subject of two public meetings open to councillors and press in 2007; however, no one expressed any interest to me then.
In 1975 the council was granted nomination rights to the property. This means the council then had the right to nominate occupants to the flats, once the property ceased to be used as NHS nurses’ accommodation.
This was never taken up. So in 2007, with the property empty and in disrepair, the owners approached us as they wanted to upgrade the block. Our legal advice was that the council was then very unlikely to be able to suddenly insist on its nomination rights. I therefore, in public, approved a proposal to negotiate a settlement to secure some funds for us and allow the building to be brought back into use.
Camden has high demand for housing but this is predominantly for larger family-sized units, and not the kind of flats at Spens House. Instead we are increasingly supporting single people to find accommodation in the private sector as part of our “Pathways” approach to housing.
I am pleased that officers agreed this settlement, winning us more money to get our council housing up to the Decent Homes standard.
With over half of our council homes needing urgent investment and the government’s refusal to provide funding, my judgment was that this council should not waste residents’ money on a dubious legal fight for lapsed nomination rights which, sadly, have lain in abeyance for nearly 35 years.
CLLR CHRIS NAYLOR
Executive Member for Homes and Housing Strategy
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