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By CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
 

Disgruntled tenants on the Kiln Estate
Tenants freeze in homes with 45-year-old heating

Olympic village will be built before new system

EXASPERATED tenants whose homes have a 45-year-old heating system have been told it will take as long to install new radiators as it will to build London’s Olympic Village.
Families living in Kiln Place estate in Gospel Oak claim outdated blow heating – which pumps out air from two vents on the bottom floor of each flat – has made people ill and leaves bedrooms upstairs cold.
Residents have criticised the council for fitting the estate – which was built in the 1960s and has never had a heating overhaul – with a £1 million security system when tenants had been calling for their homes to be renovated.
At a meeting two weeks ago, a housing official told tenants the council did not have cash for any improvements, and that they would have to wait until 2012 – the year of the Olympics – for new heating.
One neighbour, who did not wish to be named, warned she would have to leave her home if things did not improve.
She said: “It’s a disgrace that people have to live like this. It’s horrible in the winter. Apart from being freezing, it is also really expensive, and if you haven’t got the money to pay for extra electric heaters – like some of our older neighbours – then you go cold throughout the winter.”
She added that the council had told her to seek an ‘exchange’ with a family on a better-heated estate, but that she could not find any takers.
She added: “Who would want to swap with anyone living here?”
Khadija Tarambi, 30, who has lived in Kiln Place for 10 years, claims the hot air pumping through the rooms dries out her children’s skin and has inflamed her son’s eczema.
Town Hall Tory group leader Councillor Piers Wauchope visited the estate recently and promised to install central heating over the summer if the Tories gained power in May.
Labour leader of the council and Gospel Oak ward councillor Raj Chada poured scorn on the Tory pledge, arguing they hadn’t said how they would fund it. He added: “We’re trying to find a way of improving the heating, but capital investment is limited.”
He added that consultative letters would be landing on residents’ doormats in the next two weeks offering them a choice of short-term improvements.
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