Residents on Holly Lodge estate with their long email trail to the council

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IT is, according to tenants, an annual tradition. As soon as the cold weather sets in the communal boilers on Holly Lodge estate pack up, leaving people in freezing conditions for weeks at a time.

And as predictable as Christmas, the issues will not be properly fixed until next year, they add.

On Friday evening, as half the 468-home estate shivered, Camden sent an emergency engineering team with temporary boilers that needed to be craned into position.

Working through Storm Darragh, and with an emergency road closure in place, they also distributed hot-air fans to beat the chill as the work was done.

The long-standing issues with heat and hot water are linked to newer boilers and pumps using older pipework and poor maintenance.

Temporary boilers have been on site for eight years after the previous set packed up. Camden has been canvassing tenants as to their preferred systems and decided new gas-fired communal boilers were the answer. They are set to be in place in March next year.

Tenants and lease­holders are considering various options to solve the long term issues, and force a fundamental rethink of how services are provided – with the threat to withhold payments to Camden for hot water and heating until the problems are fixed.

Tenants told the New Journal how blocks across the estate have had varying degrees of service – and the problem has been going on for more than a decade. One block has only had tepid water since October.

For nine days in November they had no water at all. Then the hot water cut out at the start of December and still hasn’t returned.

Communal heating systems are at the root of the issue, say tenants. Failures in the pump rooms mean water isn’t flowing, while break­downs in the boilers mean no heat. Ordering spare parts takes weeks, they add.

And while Camden has refurbished seven blocks of 85 flats in Holly Lodge Mansions in recent years, homes installed with new systems are also experiencing failures.

Tenants say a communal boiler system has individual heaters in each home that need yearly maintenance, which has never been done.

They say they are too large for the flats and are wrecked by water being flushed through old pipes that are full of debris and muck.

One tenant told the New Journal: “The communal system does not provide economies of scale because the system is obsolete, constantly breaking down and incompetently managed. These problems are so systemic, so endless, and our reporting of them so persistent, and so endless, and the failure of Camden or their subcontractors GEM so persistent, and so endless, that we despair.”

One tenant said that Camden was determined to install communal gas boilers, which were prone to breakdowns and went against the Town Hall’s net-zero policies. Instead, each home should have an individual electric boiler installed, they said.

Highgate Ward Green councillor Lorna Russell lives on the estate.

She said: “The nightmare that is Camden’s district heating system has struck again. At last this weekend Camden acted to install new ‘extra powerful temporary boilers’ but this raises questions about why inadequate replacement boilers were installed in the first place and what the long-term solution is.”

She added she had called for an urgent meeting with Camden’s housing chief, Labour councillor Sagal Abdi-Wali.

The Holly Lodge Residents Association said: “It is utterly unacceptable that residents have been left without heating and hot water during freezing winter temperatures, year after year. We have been urging Camden to resolve this for many years and it is appalling that there is still no solution.  Residents will be meeting to discuss what steps to take.”

A Camden spokesman said: “Over the weekend, our team upgraded the temporary heating system and checked in with residents to ensure it was working properly. We are replacing the communal heating plant with a modern, sustainable installation that reduces the carbon footprint and meets current energy efficiency standards.

“Ensuring reliable heating during colder months is essential, and we remain committed to providing top-quality repair and maintenance services for our tenants and leaseholders. We apologise for any inconvenience caused during these works.”