The Alexandra & Ainsworth estate, also known as Rowley Way [Oxyman, CC By 2.5, Detail] 

• THOUSANDS of residents on Camden’s estates are being told their new communal heating is a fantastic 21st-century system.

It isn’t. It’s from the age of the dinosaurs.

It’s based on clapped-out thinking that belongs to the 1960s: a central boiler house pumping hot water for miles and miles, all the way round the estate, wasting an estimated 40 per cent of the heat on its journey.

Camden is installing this system on all its estates in a “one-size-fits-all” approach, forcing it to work everywhere regardless of the particular needs of all the different estates.

Standardised thinking, easy to deal with contractually, because it’s always the same thing. You just repeat it.

In the case of my estate (Rowley Way aka the Alexandra and Ainsworth), it would also involve wrecking a Grade II* listed building. But they don’t care.

In Camden’s new planning applications they claim they have consulted residents, but we had never seen these completely new planning applications until a month ago.

The proposed new system has been designed by well-known private firms of heating engineers, including some very world-famous names, working for the council as shortlisted “preferred suppliers”.

They know perfectly well they are helping Camden to install a clunky, antiquated, system based on the engineering of 50 years ago.

The very idea of centrally-generated communal heating is on its last legs, as the world now moves forward to sustainable systems that focus on minimising heat loss and energy demand.

Those famous engineers working for Camden know all about these much better systems. In fact they are designing and installing them all over the world.

But not here in Camden.

They daren’t go against Camden’s in-house technical officers, who are a law unto themselves. Even the elected councillors don’t dare to interfere with them.

It’s like being on a runaway train with the in-house technical officers at the controls.

Meanwhile the consulting engineers are doing excellent work elsewhere, but they can’t say anything because they get lots of other work from Camden Council.

They would be biting the hand that feeds them.

I sometimes wonder how they sleep at night.

TOM MUIRHEAD, NW8