Illustration by John Sadler www.johnsadlerillustration.com 

• BELIEVE it or not, Camden protects its leaseholders from identification with an unchallenged and false claim of “data protection”.

Why false? Well, because their names are listed in the Land Registry which for a fee of £20 anyone can read. In short these names are already in the public domain.

Does this matter? Yes it does, if you are a council tenant sharing a building with an absentee lease­holder who will not take responsibility for unruly tenants, over­crowded tenants or persistent structural damage to your council home.

In such cases all a tenant can do is call their estate officer who holds the name and contact details of the absentee landlord.

The officer is expect to make contact with the leaseholder while the council tenant, on the other hand, is deprived of any agency.

However should the leaseholder be unavailable: out of the country, or just reluctant to take an interest, or if it happens to be a weekend, a bank holiday, Christmas, new year, and the officer is not available, or then again if the officer’s load is too big to manage, then… nothing gets done.

In the case of a flood from above with burst or broken pipes, the sort of situation that can’t be left till sometime whenever, it just has to go on flooding, causing enormous damage to the council’s property and stress to the tenant as their home gets crumbled.

The amazing thing is that not only does the rogue leaseholder not care – after all any damage will eventually get fixed free by Camden – but Camden doesn’t care either!

Camden’s attitude to its own property and to its own tenants in the face of irresponsible absentee leaseholders takes laissez-faire to a new stratosphere.

It is time this leaseholder protection and unworkable estate officer arrangement was brought to a halt and new, rational, procedures put in place.

I have been asking for this hopeless situation to be addressed for years but it continues to be ignored.

ELAINE CHAMBERS, NW3